Old and New Materials

From looking at the picture of the samurai sword and the picture of silk, never in a million years would you think that they are similar. Its not exactly the physical aspect of these two things that makes them similar, it’s the chemical make-up of these two objects that make them alike.

Both the samurai sword and the silk have been around for hundreds of years, differences is that we have only recently found spectacular ways of using silk. In the TED video by Flo Omenetto we learn that you can take the cocoon of silk and using reverse engineering to go back to being a water and protein gland. And from this you can use silk in multiple ways from a coffee cup to fixing a fracture in a bone. Then there’s “Secrets of the Samurai Sword” made by heating and mixing iron and carbon, that later can be heated again to be molded. Pretty cool right?

Two different things you might say, but not exactly. Both are proven to be durable, the samurai sword can be brittle but it can also be flexible. Put these two types of metals together and you have the perfect samurai. The silk can be a solid but if you want, it can also dissolve. Point being, both can be shaped or used the way you want them to.