Is it possible to make such a clean cut?

Question

I started reading Rurouni Kenshin, and came across this scene:

Is it possible to perform such a clean cut, or is this just some made up anime fiction? If so, what is the name of this style/trope? (I don't particularly dislike seeing it. It has its charm.)

Edit:

As it seems materials seem to play a large role in the possibility, the tools used in this particular setup are:

A daikon radish
A kitchen knife in the 11th year of Meiji (1878) made by a legendary swordsmith's son.

@Maroon Oh the trope name is clean cut? Well guess I made a good guess on naming it then, was just some random naming I came up with thou :/. — Dimitri mx, Apr 27 '14 at 19:34
not every carries a whole daikon radish on their person like that. — кяαzєя, Apr 27 '14 at 21:29

score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:46

5

I'm not sure if the Sceptics site would be a better fit for the "is this possible" portion of the question, but I'll give my attempt at an answer.

As stated by my comment, TV Tropes calls this Clean Cut (which it argues is sometimes related to Absurdly Sharp Blade). Given that their naming for this is very "straightforward" (i.e. this trope describes making very clean cuts with blades) compared to others (e.g. "idiot hair" or "ahoge") it seems reasonable to conclude that this trope is generally referred to as "Clean Cut".

It's not very clear whether or not this is possible in real life - this would most certainly depend on the sharpness of the blade, the thickness of the material in question, and the exact material being cut, among other things. For example, in my experience, it's much easier to cleanly chop reasonably sized vegetable segments (at least with carrots, onions, turnips, etc - vegetables that aren't of the leafy type) than to cut meat that way.

As per the now edited question: the vegetable here is a daikon, which is used in a lot of East Asian cooking. I'll need to look further to check the possibility of cutting daikon very neatly in that form. With this specific vegetable, a relatively clean cut (assuming good technique) seems possible, as per videos such as this one and this, but I'm not really sure.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:46

Community

1

answered Apr 27 '14 at 19:43

Maroon

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Note: I'm not particularly comfortable referring to TV Tropes as a reference for naming without any further corroboration from other sites, but the naming makes sense given that it's also a relatively intuitive name anyway. – Maroon Apr 27 '14 at 20:07
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I'm not sure about putting it back together, but can confirm that getting similar cuts from carrots is possible. I haven't bought any daikon here to check (although they grow to monster size). Heck, you _can_ get this from meat, too - provided it's frozen first. – Clockwork-Muse Apr 28 '14 at 08:49
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@Clockwork-Muse I don't think he is putting it back together to stay together, I think he is just placing them next to each other to show the sharpness of the cut. – Cyberson Apr 28 '14 at 23:13
@Cyberson You taught wrong, in the manga it said there was no fibre damage. And that the vegtable healed up again as if never cut. – Dimitri mx May 01 '14 at 02:08
@Dimitrimx I wasn't trying to teach wrong just that it appeared to be that he was just putting them back together. – Cyberson May 02 '14 at 02:45

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 24 '20 at 09:07

No. The sharpest blades ever made are composed of obsidian and artificial crystals, as they can fracture down to an edge mere molecule thick Even under magnification they retain an edge that are sharper than metal. Even so they are incapable of producing such a cut. Cells adhere to each other through cell-surface proteins called cell adhesion molecules (CAMs), they bond cells together and bond on the molecular level, far smaller than any blade edge.

Is it possible to make such a clean cut?

2 Answers2