Science in Scouting: OMG! My parang sucks!!

Sigh... sooner or later, you have to sharpen that tool. But then again, why must we sharpen in? Well, the reason are obvious right? A blunt machete won't be good for cutting.

There are quite a number of factors that cause the machete to go blunt, like how frequent you use it and how often do you maintain it. A machete should be treated like your own child, with care and love. Awh... but instead of rubbing it with baby oil, coat it with oil other than baby oil, maybe cooking oil?? It's just to protect it from rusting. Rust makes it fragile, which is a big no-no. I'm not sure whether baby oil works, but anyway, the oil just prevents water vapour and oxygen from turning the cool-looking and shiny metal into horrible-looking orange-reddish colour metal.

Another reason why you don't want your parang sitting at the back of the QM Room to rust is because getting cut by a rusty metal could infect you with the deadly Tetanus disease.

Ok, I know I suck at drawing. This is the best I can do to demonstrate how does the edge of the parang look like when it is sharp and blunt.

Let's insert some science into this. Here's a formula, Pressure=Force/Area. When you want to cut something, you want the edge of the parang to be as sharp as possible, right? When it is sharp, the area of contact between the parang and the object-to-be-cut is small. And from the formula, as the size of the area decreases, the pressure increases. That way, you will exert lots of pressure, just enough to slice something.

But imagine if it is blunt. The parang was abused and unloved for many years. When it is blunt, the area of contact increases, decreasing the pressure exerted on the object. That's why sometimes it's hard to cut something with a blunt cutting tool.

This knowledge can be twisted around so you could apply it in muddy swamps. If you were to be jungle hiking, in a swampy area, and your shoes are always sinking into the mud, you need to decrease the pressure exerted by your shoe on the mud. Obviously, the force cannot be changed, because you can't change your body weight. But you can change the area of the sole of your shoe. Just stick a large piece of cardboard under your shoe, and you shouldn't sink that easily. Ok, this is out of the topic already...

So, the next time Sir says "You! Go sharpen that parang, NOW!", he is right! It may mean dinner for tonight, or push ups until your arms break.