It’s only a matter of time before a movie villain pulling off the crime of the century needs a cutting tool that is harder than anything else on Earth. Perhaps it’s a burglary that involves cutting ...

In materials science, the hardness of a material measures its resistance to deformation by indentation, scratching or other physical actions. By this metric, plastics and soft tissues are said to be ...

A research team co-led by Professor Yang Lu from the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Hong Kong (HKU), and Professor Chengming Li from the Institute for ...

Material scientists in China experimenting with carbon in its many forms have conjured up a form of glass so hard that it can scratch the surface of a diamond. As reported by the South China Morning ...

The material is a boron nitride “nanocomposite.” This means that, rather than consisting of one large continuous crystal, it is made of crystalline boron-nitride grains that are each a few to several ...

• Engineers can use hardness testing to verify the composition or heat-treatment history of materials. • Rockwell, Brinell, Vickers, and Shore are common hardness tests. Their use depends on the ...