Rapunzel! Rapunzel! How Strong Is Your Hair?

The study examined the tensile strength of hair from eight mammalian species, including humans, and found that hair strength decreased with increasing diameter, supporting the "smaller is stronger" principle. It highlighted the hierarchical keratin-based structure of hair, which contributed to its strength and toughness, comparable to some metals. The research suggested potential applications in creating bioinspired synthetic materials but concluded that scaling up hair strength, as seen in Rapunzel, was impractical due to defects and lack of connectivity between individual hairs.