what is the strongest substance on earth?

Answer 1

It depends on what you mean by strong! There are different ways of measuring strength. Diamond scores pretty highly in most categories though.

Answer 2

The hardest natural substance is a diamond but I hear one of the strongest substances is a spider's web.

'Some spider silk strands are stronger than steel strands of the same thickness.'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_web

However, I do not know what is the strongest substance.

Answer 3

Please define "strong".

Diamond is harder than most everything, being able to scratch, saw or pierce everything else without reciprocal effect or much wear... but a big diamond can be broken by a well aimed blow from a metallic object cleaving its crystalline structure.

Steel alloys (or tungsten alloys) are not quoite so hard, but much more resilient and an item made from them can stand tremendous force and support large weight per mass without bending or breaking.

Then, there is stone, say basalt, that is not as hard as diamond or resilient as metal, but will stand untouched for millenia and erodes only veryyyyy slowly where most metals will have been reduced to salts and oxydes after but a few centuries (gold and metals of the platinum family are also able to stay intact through centuries, but are much softer)

Answer 4

Strongest is a rather general word when it comes to materials.

Some may say it is a diamond, however, this is only the hardest material. I'm sure you could break it with a hammer. Whereas you couldn't break titanium with a hammer but a diamond could scratch it.

Answer 5

The hardest substance ever known th man is DIAMOND due to its strong and very stable covalent bonds existing between the carbon atoms.

Answer 6

Strongest man made substance is Borazin or Boron Tri-Nitride. You can set fire to a diamond.

Answer 7

your question is one that exhibits the failure of language to be as precise as science can be. That is, what do you mean by "strong?" Hardness? Diamonds are very hard, but they can be shattered. Compressive strength? Concrete takes enormous compressive loads but fails fairly easily with shear or tensile stress. And, are we talking strength for a given diameter of material, or a given mass of it (makes a big difference comparing metals to less dense materials).

And in what conditions are we making the measurement? (Using diamond again as an example, in a hot oxidizing atmosphere, diamond will burn, where "lesser" materials like aluminum oxide will survive. So in that sense, in those conditions, zirconium oxide is 'stronger' than diamond.).The physical form can also have a bearing on the issue. The polycrystalline form of a given material is often less prone to fail under stress than the same material in a single crystalline state; that's because cracks in one little crystal grain don't propagate as easily across grain boundaries as they do in a single crystal. Both are the same material, same atoms bonded in the same way, but they behave differently under mechanical stress.

I'm not trying to confuse you (though I may have, unfortunately, done that) but alert you to the fact that "strong" is not a measureable physical property.

Now, all that said, it is a general truism that the stronger (in electron volts of energy) the chemical bonds in a material, and the shorter (in nanometers or picometers) those bonds are, the stronger the material holds together. In this regard, diamond (despite its brittleness arising from its crystalline nature) is a tremendously strong material. It is only exceeded by its cousin graphite, and then only is a very specialized sense. In a single plane of carbon atoms formed into graphite, the bond lengths are even shorter than in diamond, and thus (in that direction) graphite is the chemically strongest of all materials. Of course, these single planes of graphite are only very weakly bonded with each other and slip readily, so that in a mechanical sense, graphite is a very weak material and slides so readily it can be used as a lubricant. There's a real paradox for you: a material that is at the same time both the chemically strongest and one of the mechanically weakest!

Answer 8

i know lots of people are saying diamond
i thought of that
but in strength..did you think of a spider's web??
or there is genetically modified goats milk CONTAINING spider's web.

"A goat that produces spider's web protein is about to revolutionise the materials industry.
Stronger and more flexible than steel, spider silk offers a lightweight alternative to carbon fibre.
This "silk milk" will be used to produce a web-like material called Biosteel.
Naturally occurring spider silk is widely recognised as the strongest, toughest fibre known to man.

Spider's web is lighter and stronger than steel.

Its tensile strength is greater than steel and it is 25 percent lighter than synthetic, petroleum-based polymers.

These qualities will allow BioSteel to be used in applications where strength and lightness are essential, such as aircraft, racing vehicles and bullet-proof clothing."

Yes! Its Spider's Web!

Answer 9

Strength or hardness/softess is measured on the moh scale. I believe the hardest substance according to it is indeed diamond (made from carbon!)

Answer 10

Diamond and spider web seem to be the favourites but I am siding with "blinkers" who said that water is indestructible.
In large quantities, water can destroy buildings, uproot trees, and move cars.

Both diamond and spider web can be destroyed. Water cannot be destroyed in any form, either by hitting it, heating it, or leaving it to decay (because it will not).