The Squid's Beak May Revolutionize Engineering

Ace905 writes "For years the razor-sharp beak that squid use to eat their prey has posed a puzzle to scientists. Squid are soft and fragile, but have a beak as dense as rock and sharp enough to break through hard shells. Scientists have long wondered why the beak doesn't injure the squid itself as is uses it. New research has just been published in the the journal Science that explains the phenomenon. One of the researchers described the squid beak as 'like placing an X-Acto blade in a block of fairly firm Jell-O and then trying to use it to chop celery.' Careful examination shows that the beak is formed in a gradient of density, becoming harder towards the tip end. Understanding how to make such hardness gradients could revolutionize engineering anywhere that 'interfaces between soft and hard materials [are required].' One of the first applications researchers envision is prosthetic limbs."

Beaks are neat

Puffer fish also have a shell-crushing beak attached to a relatively soft base, but they have the advantage of a jaw bone(thought they lack skeletal structures like ribs) to propel it. It still always amazed me how they managed to have such soft lips and skin and yet chew apart snails and other hard shelled foods so fast.

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Indeed. The puffer fish is not as well known as its cousin, the Babel Fish, but that should not let you from putting a puffer fish into your pocket and letting it get to work. You'll find that the puffer fish is a far better master of the sensual arts, and you'll not again be tempted by a blow job hamster which is, as I am sure you will agree, too little endowed in the lips, and to much endowed with the teeth.

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Check out the picture if you've got a strong stomach. http://floridakeystreasures.com/diving/puffer.shtml [floridakeystreasures.com] I can't think of a worse creature to make that particular request of... the blowjob hamster, while also terrible(and I hate hamsters, things bite me all the time at work) at least couldn't bite the thing clean off through a Kevlar condom. My green spotted puffer Shakespeare has nibbled my fingers on accident, too, he's only about an inch in length from being able to take bites of me.

No comments?

A front page article with no comments? Really? ...are you all having sex or something?

Re:No comments?

Individually, yes.

Re:No comments?

That would only explain a delay of a minute or two.

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A front page article with no comments? Really? ...are you all having sex or something?

Farm-fresh prairie squid. Gotta remember to pull the ethereal beak first cuz that's a mistake you can't make twice.

the other mystery

Now if only they can figure out why the "lobster sticks to magnet!" and LOBSTER HAS A BEAK! (if you dunno what that's from, don't hate. Trust me, it's funny)

Basically it mentions a hardness gradient

Basically the article says something about a hardness gradient across the material is why the beak doesn't damage the squid itself. Then they say something about how this idea can be applied to manmade materials. Even that idea isn't entirely new anyways among manmade materials. The traditional samurai sword is forged in such a way that the edge is tempered and hardened to hold razor sharpness, yet the bulk of the blade is not hardened so that it doesn't shatter upon impact.

Re:Basically it mentions a hardness gradient

That's not a gradient. It's a binary transition from martensite to pearlite [wikipedia.org]. Still, I agree that the idea is not exactly earth-shattering. In fact, my kneejerk reaction was "duh".

Re:Basically it mentions a hardness gradient

Thats the trouble with traditional Japanese differential hardening, the difference in hardnesses is slightly too great. The edges, while they hold a razor edge well when cutting softer targets, are more prone to chipping than is pleasant, and the bulk of the blade is pearlite, which while shatterproof, does not spring well enough; it's very prone to taking bends rather than snapping back into place like a spring. Don't think I'm calling the process bad or inferior, it's just different than other solutions and has its own set of problems.

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I'm not really familiar with swords but I know a little bit about steel. The Wikipedia description didn't make that much sense to me possibly because it's so brief.

Martensite and pearlite aren't two mutually exclusive phases as such. Pearlite is a combination of ferrite and cementite. Ferrite is alpha-iron, a particular crystal form of pure iron, and cementite is iron carbide Fe3C. So pearlite itself is actually two phases interspersed. In plain carbon steel, pearlite forms from eutectic (.77% carbon) aus

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The sword example is really just about a mixture. You have areas of soft stuff and areas of hard stuff to get properties between the two extremes for the whole. The tricky details are you have exclusively hard stuff on the cutting edge and exclusively soft stuff on the back edge - but the majority of it is just a lot of different layers of stuff that would be too hard or too soft to be useful on their own. A modern parallel is fibreglass - hard glass mixed in with soft plastic gives you something resonab

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While forming the base steel of a sword is often done by folding overhard and oversoft steel together as you describe, differentially carburized sword blades work in a similar way to case hardened materials with a gradient of hardness as you move into the material from the outside, leaving the edges, where extra carbon seeps in from both sides, very hard, the surface of the blade very hard, but the core like a spring. This is one of the last processes that can be used before harding a sword blade, and only

Evolution

All this from evolution. Who would have though it was smarter than us?

Re:I think you mean...

Actually, if I understand the article right, the gradient is more like soggy ramen to 3-week old dried-on-the-stove Spaghetti-o. It gets pretty hard on the far side, and cannot be destroyed without the power of Dremel at your disposal.

Prostheses

One of the first applications researchers envision is prosthetic limbs.

Prosthetic beaks? Seriously?

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Prosthetic beaks? Seriously?

Haven't you ever wanted to bite into a nautilus just like an apple? Mmm, nautilus.

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Darn right it sounds obvious enough, how haven't they known this before? You'd easily be able to tell by just pushing your fingernail into it at different positions down its length....

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It sounds simple and obvious enough, but thinking about how to create materials that behave like this one realizes the challenges involved (not that I am a materials engineer and know anything about it.)

Forget synthesising the process, I think we all know where this is headed: Squid farming. Why figure out how to do it when nature has provided us with the goods, handily attached to a tasty snack.

OK, so there may be a few disappointed faces when people get a prosthetic beak instead of a hand. But I'm sure they'll come around to the idea when they think about it a little bit and realise that beaks are awesome.

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But I'm sure they'll come around to the idea when they think about it a little bit and realise that beaks are awesome.

My only question is how far up my arm do I have to chop the hand off to qualify for this? I would like to keep my elbow, but if that is the cost of being the first human with a squid-beak hand, I can make sacrifices.

Re:Squid = awesome

Realistically I don't know if this is so "revolutionary"

Are you so bold as to question the editorial integrity of /.?

No, as the headline says, the entire field of Engineering will never be the same.

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Oh, come on. I can't even believe you're posting on such a trivial subject. I mean, really, haven't you got better things to do? Everyone knows he doesn't tear out wrist chunks because he grabs a hold of the web before swinging on it. Duh.

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... or any case hardened item.

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Using B to get from A to C is an engineering revolution?

How the hell did we ever get into space?

I think it's because we used numbers instead of letters.