2007-03-26 08:44:23 · 11 answers · asked by southock 2 in Food & Drink ➔ Cooking & Recipes
It's to do with density, hardness and malleability.
A knife will cut cucumbers, tomatoes, apples etc - Gold and Lead.
A knife has great difficulty with steel etc - and ice.
Cutting Mercury with a knife is real hell.
2007-03-26 08:54:37 · answer #1 · answered by Bill N 3 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Lots of things matter:
... the thinness of the blade, and its sharpness (sharpness can be achieved because the edge is very thin, and/or because its very straight --from being "honed" with a "steel" for example)
....the weight of a knife (a heavy chef's knife cuts more easily than a small short knife --think of the difference between a large screwdriver and a little dinky one, or different kinds and qualities of saws)
....the rigidity of the blade or whole knife can matter too for some things
...the type and texture of food that's being cut... some things are cut more easily with a scallopped edge knife, for example (like bread and tomatoes) --and they're always "sharp" because of their shape, but of course you could always use another type of knife too as long as it was very sharp
...the technique used while cutting... a forward motion while making cuts usually works better than almost no forward motion or than just pressing straight-down on a food...
if you want to truly "chop" straight down, it's best to use a "cleaver" though a rocking motion with a chef's knife can be fine too
Those are just a few things, but learning which knives work most easily to cut up various things makes cooking a whole lot more fun (and the cutting/chopping go a lot faster!)
HTH,
Diane B.
2007-03-26 16:44:44 · answer #2 · answered by Diane B. 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Surface tension and an un-sharp knife. A properly honed and sharpened knife will cut through the edge of a paper napkin without any trouble
2007-03-26 15:57:07 · answer #3 · answered by Steve G 7 · 3⤊ 0⤋
a sharp knife will cut though anything
2007-03-26 15:49:42 · answer #4 · answered by skyler 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
A properly sharpened and honed blade should cut through just about anything in the kitchen, including the pages of a cookbook.
2007-03-26 16:05:37 · answer #5 · answered by Tom ツ 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Somethings are not knife-able.
2007-03-27 15:05:00 · answer #6 · answered by ? 6 · 0⤊ 0⤋
some knifes are for particular things and some for others.
that's why they call a butter knife a butter knife.
2007-03-26 15:53:08 · answer #7 · answered by flipsk8r112 1 · 0⤊ 0⤋
because your knife isn't sharp enough!!
2007-03-26 15:58:59 · answer #8 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
id guess its to do with the arrangement and number of atoms in a substance.
2007-03-26 15:49:06 · answer #9 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 0⤋
#1 is right. soem atoms are just too strongly arranged
or maybe it is just dull
2007-03-26 15:50:42 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋