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So, while shear strength is typically used for cutting in, well, pretty much everywhere except the wiki and the wiki tends to prefer compressive strength (pulverization) for cutting, I just had a thought. Why don't we factor hardness in the equation? Like, for example... Let's say you have a block of gypsum and a block of tungsten carbide. Gypsum has a Mohs hardness rating of 2 while tungsten carbide has a hardness rating of 9 through 9.5. A katana, which has a hardness of 5 because steel, can cut right through the gypsum block, yet be unable to cut through the tungsten carbide block. On the same vein, if you use an angle grinder with an industrial diamond-laced grindwheel instead of a katana, the angle grinder would easily cut through both the gypsum block and the tungsten carbide block.
Under our current methods of handling AP, we'd consider the angle grinder to be more powerful than the katana even though nobody in their right mind would consider the angle grinder a weapon. All that because we try and figure out how many joules it would take to cut through the blocks of gypsum and tungsten carbide rather than even thinking of just how nuanced hardness is. So why the discrepancy in the form of lacking the ability to take hardness into account?
Under our current methods of handling AP, we'd consider the angle grinder to be more powerful than the katana even though nobody in their right mind would consider the angle grinder a weapon. All that because we try and figure out how many joules it would take to cut through the blocks of gypsum and tungsten carbide rather than even thinking of just how nuanced hardness is. So why the discrepancy in the form of lacking the ability to take hardness into account?
