This is an excerpt from an article published on the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's website. You can see the original post here.
Both are calium carbonate, but one is hard, the other is soft. Why?
How seashells get their strength
Study shows how calcium carbonate forms composites to make strong materials such as in shells and pearls
January 08, 2016
RICHLAND, Wash. –
Seashells and lobster claws are hard to break, but chalk is soft
enough to draw on sidewalks. Though all three are made of calcium
carbonate crystals, the hard materials include clumps of soft biological
matter that make them much stronger. A study today in Nature
Communications reveals how soft clumps get into crystals and endow them
with remarkable strength.
The results show that such clumps become incorporated via chemical
interactions with atoms in the crystals, an unexpected mechanism based
on previous understanding. By providing insight into the formation of
natural minerals that are a composite of both soft and hard components,
the work will help scientists develop new materials for a sustainable
energy future, based on this principle.
"This work helps us to sort out how rather weak crystals can form
composite materials with remarkable mechanical properties," said
materials scientist Jim De Yoreo of the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. "It also provides us with ideas for trapping carbon dioxide in useful
materials to deal with the excess greenhouse gases we're putting in the
atmosphere, or for incorporating light-responsive nanoparticles into
highly ordered crystalline matrices for solar energy applications."
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