The Strongest Industrial Forces On The Planet And How They Are Measured

Industrial forces can include anything whereby something very strong and very resilient is crafted and held together for a purpose. It covers manmade forces as well as animal forces. So, how do these things compare? How are they measured? The majority of that information follows.

Forging 

Forging is one of the first industrial forces that people learned to harness. They were able to melt metals during the Bronze Age, and even a little before that, to make various instruments and weapons. While forging provided the means to make many tools and create many different objects, and forging is still used with steel today, it does not rank as high as a few other industrial forces. 

Welding

Welding reinforces metal at joints, and it creates intensely strong bonds between two pieces of metal. Subtypes of welding, such as stud welding, literally drives bolts through other metal objects to create a completely irreversible and extremely secure bond. There is only one industrial force known to be even stronger than welding, and that force is not manmade. 

Spider Silk

In the natural world, spider silk is known to be almost as strong as steel. That may seem particularly weird considering the fact that you can swipe through a spider's web in a second. However, if you compact several strands of spider silk together and make them as densely packed as a piece of rebar, the spider silk is stronger than the rebar. That is because both the rebar and the spider silk rod are measured in terms of tensile strength.  When compared to welding in terms of tensile strength, these two industrial forces are almost equal, despite their very different uses and appearances. 

How These Forces Are Measured

In terms of strength and durability, these three forces and their products are measured by tensile strength. Tensile strength is how far you can pull or stretch something before it breaks. It is also how long something will last when under various natural forces and pressure. Forging creates strength by melding materials together, but it may not be enough when building a structure, so welding makes these forged materials even stronger. When a spider spins silk, it is as strong as mid-grade steel in terms of strength, although you are not likely to use a lot of spider silk to create any structure in which to work or reside. However, that may one day change as scientists are looking to harness spider silk and its strength for many other things.