When you’re looking for an upgrade to your culinary experience you’ve probably never thought – “I know where I can find inspiration – Nasa.”
But bare with us, as we’re not talking about vacuum packaged space food coming to your kitchen but rather a hi-tech upgrade to your knife-rack.
Designers of the KNasa Chef knife used science developed by the US space agency to create a self-sharpening blade.
The knife uses an alloy originally developed by the Californian Institute of Technology which is reportedly twice as strong as titanium. The alloy, which was later tested by engineers at Nasa, coats the knives and possesses nano-serration, forming microscopic teeth along the blade.
This microscopic serration is worn as the knife is used and thus exposes more teeth – sharpening itself. This allows the knives to stay sharp for five times longer than normal.
The knives are also incredibly strong due to the coating of the alloy, with a score of over 70 on the Rockwell (HRC) scale – a scale which measures the hardness of a material by the indent which can be made on it by a Rockwell hardness tester.
The US sellers of the knives have made a Kickstarter campaign for their product and so far have raised more than $400,000 (about £325,000).
The knife is priced at less than $100 (£81) which they say is much lower than professional knives of a similar quality. The makers released a video promoting the knife, which can be seen below.
