Reference no: EM132782188

(a) Why is it that exceptionally strong materials, such as ceramics and very high strength steels, are almost inevitably brittle?

(b) One of the first researchers to investigate the strength of materials was Gallileo, who measured the ultimate tensile strength of piano wire (very high strength, heavily worked, brittle steel). Among other experiments, he measured the maximum weight a sample of wire could support as a function of the original length of the sample, and found that the apparent strength of long wires was below the strength of short ones. Explain this result.