Is silk stronger than steel?

Answer 1

Yes if you compared the same weight. Silk strands can stretch without breaking much better than steel needles. this is what Causti means by tensile strength. The tensile strength per gram value is much stronger in silk.

Silk is also elastic instead of ductile like steel. This means you can stretch and squeeze silk and still get it back to the same shape. Whereas steel can be pressed into different shapes and it would not return to the same shape by itself.

Pound for pound, you'd find a big braid of silk much stronger than a similar weight cable. But because we usually deal with steel in larger quantities, it isn't a fair comparison. A steel knife will break spider webs any time.

Answer 2

As a matter of fact, silk is a stronger material when it's being used to seduce a middle eastern prince.

Answer 3

the material that spiders produce is stronger than steel in reality, but since it is so thin and steel is so much bigger and thicker, we would need lots of strands of the spider silk to make it worth, but that would be very hard since it is so thin it breaks easily.

Answer 4

It depends on what you mean by strong.
Steel is capable of being seamlessly combined into many different sized objects. silk on the other hand will not combine into much larger than a thread in a solid piece.

Answer 5

it has a higher tensile strength yes

edit: assuming spider silk

Answer 6

In many respects, yes.

Answer 7

No.