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From sciencedaily.com

In a new study, researchers at the University of California San Diego investigate why hair is incredibly strong and resistant to breaking. The findings could lead to the development of new materials for body armor and help cosmetic manufacturers create better hair care

products.

Hair has a strength to weight ratio comparable to steel. It can be stretched up to one and a half times its original length before breaking. "We wanted to understand the mechanism behind this extraordinary property," said Yang (Daniel) Yu, a nanoengineering Ph.D. student at UC San Diego and the first author of the study.

"Nature creates a variety of interesting materials and architectures in very ingenious ways. We're interested in understanding the correlation between the structure and the properties of biological materials to develop synthetic materials and designs -- based on nature -- that have better performance than existing ones," said Marc Meyers, a professor of mechanical engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and the lead author of the study.

In a study published online in Dec. in the journal Materials Science and Engineering C, researchers examined at the nanoscale level how a strand of human hair behaves when it is deformed, or stretched. The team found that hair behaves differently depending on how fast or slow it is stretched. The faster hair is stretched, the stronger it is. "Think of a highly viscous substance like honey," Meyers explained. "If you deform it fast it becomes stiff, but if you deform it slowly it readily pours."

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