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A team of engineers at MIT led by C. Cem Tasan has discovered why steel razor blades go dull even when cutting hair that's 50 times softer than them. Using an electron microscopic, they found that under the right conditions a single hair can chip a blade edge.
[...] However, razor blades don't last and other steel blades, like knives and scalpels, also go dull even when used exclusively on softer materials. According to MIT, this is because there's more going on than a simple wearing down of metal, such as happens when a blade is rubbed against something harder, like a whetstone. Instead, what happens is that if a razor blade strikes a hair under the wrong conditions, it becomes stressed, cracks, and then chips due to a mechanism called stress intensification. This chipping leads to more cracks, leading to more chipping in a cascading cycle, ultimately resulting in a very dull razor and an unpleasant shave.
Journal Reference:
Gianluca Roscioli, Seyedeh Mohadeseh Taheri-Mousavi, Cemal Cem Tasan. How hair deforms steel [$], Science (DOI: 10.1126/science.aba9490)
Apparently it is not because the hairs have been affected by Brundlefly hybridization.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Saturday August 08 2020, @05:32AM (12 children)
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fadrian on Saturday August 08 2020, @06:09AM (3 children)
I've lived in this world with beard and without. Here's the reality: Without a beard, shaving's a pain, and you'd rather not do it, because you, like everyone else, are a lazy bastard, but if you don't you end up growing a beard by default; with a beard, grooming's a pain, and you'd rather not do it because you, like everyone else, are a lazy bastard, but if you don't, you end up looking like a refugee from a ZZ Top tribute band. The moral of the story? You can't fucking win.
That is all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @07:24AM (2 children)
How was this modded Troll? It is the honest truth.
(Score: 2) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Saturday August 08 2020, @09:29AM (1 child)
There's a middle ground: I wear a beard explicitely because I'm too fucking lazy to shave every day, but I don't keep it trimmed to perfection - just enough to look acceptable.
I give it a clean trim every monday morning and that's it. Come Friday afternoon, it starts looking really quite unkempt. But then it matches my TGIF outfit, and the weekend is coming up anyway.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Saturday August 08 2020, @11:29AM
Even if you go for two trims per week and just a comb on the other days it's still less hassle than shaving.
Now that we're expected to wear a face mask in public though, it doesn't matter what you do because nobody is going to see it anyway ;)
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @06:31AM (5 children)
I agree. Same goes for haircuts. That's why I haven't cut my hair or shaved in 20 years, ever since I moved into my mother's basement. I don't leave the basement much either, don't want to be confused for a Sasquatch. Out here in fly over country some per-pubescent looking male might try to shoot me and hang my head on their wall. I also like my women hairy. Leg hair, arm pit hair, all of it. The more the better. I'm referring to pictures of women, real life women seem to run away from me. Not sure why. Maybe I should brush my teeth.
More seriously. I'm with Runaway1956 on this one. Learn to use a straight razor. It's way better than anything else. No cuts or scrapes or feeling like you just rubbed your face on asphalt. There's a learning curve but it's worth it. You'll enjoy shaving. Best of all it's dirt cheap in the long term, as a single razor will last you a lifetime. But yeah if you use plastic disposable junk for shaving it's very much like self-flagellation.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday August 08 2020, @06:44AM (4 children)
"I'm referring to pictures of women, real life women seem to run away from me. Not sure why. Maybe I should brush my teeth."
That might be a start.
"It's way better than anything else."
Except for not mutilating oneself. An option you've just excluded. Because hairy women make you feel inadequate, perhaps?
"You'll enjoy shaving."
No, no, I definitely will not.
"But yeah if you use plastic disposable junk for shaving it's very much like self-flagellation."
"Disposable junk" is decent as long as you don't keep trying to use it too long. Just throw it in the trash and pick up a new one. Often.
Still doesn't do a damn thing for the underlying problem though. Why are you afraid of hair? Why do you want to appear pre-pubescent?
Why are you in denial?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @07:12AM (3 children)
Not one for humor huh? It was meant to be sarcasm. The point was better put by the above poster. Grooming takes effort. One can debate what the minimal acceptable amount of effort is. But if you don't put in any effort you end up a hairy smelly Sasquatch. And that applies for both genders.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday August 08 2020, @07:24AM (2 children)
/Au contraire/, I love humor.
"It was meant to be sarcasm."
I got that. It just didn't work, as sarcasm.
"The point was better put by the above poster."
Well, thank you. It's always nice to get a little credit.
"Grooming takes effort. One can debate what the minimal acceptable amount of effort is."
And the fallacy in the above is the assumption that more effort = better grooming.
A certain amount of effort may be necessary, but additional effort over and above that does not necessarily represent any improvement.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @07:32AM (1 child)
So what you're saying is that the amount of effort you put in IS the minimal hence according to you the optimal amount. I'd sure hate for you to be wrong on this one.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday August 08 2020, @07:35AM
Nope. Not at all.
My own amount might, in fact, be slightly more than minimal, and yet be misspent in such a way that my own appearance is yet slightly less than minimal.
Among many other possible scenarios.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday August 08 2020, @02:12PM (1 child)
Well, actually it's because in a fight a beard is a good thing to grab. Different groups had different attitudes towards that, though. And there's a bit a a consideration about cold weather, too. IIUC the huns, or perhaps it was the tartars, used to sear their faces with a hot iron to keep a beard from growing...but they did wear a long queue on the top of their head, so it wasn't exactly a reasonable choice. Alexander of Macedonia was one of the early military leaders requiring the troops to shave.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2020, @06:52PM
But beards are bad when fighting against humans...
That said, _detachable_ fake beards might help you win in a fight or avoid getting literally dragged into a fight. ;)