Researchers butter up the old 'scratch test' to make it tough
Thursday, May 26, 2011 - 14:30
in Physics & Chemistry
It might not seem like scraping the top of a cold stick of butter with a knife could be a scientific test, but engineers at MIT say the process is very similar to the "scratch test," which is perhaps the oldest known way to assess a material's hardness and strength or, in scientific language, its resistance to deformation.