Can Anything Break if You Hit It Hard Enough?

If you hit it with enough force, or hit it in just the right way, almost anything can break—that is, separate into pieces. Even the hardest materials we know of—including diamonds, wurtzite, boron nitride, moissanite, and corundum—can be fractured.

For instance, it’s possible to shatter a diamond with a metal hammer. Now, diamonds are by far the hardest naturally occurring substance known. They can scratch just about everything else but are nearly impossible to scratch with anything else. That’s because strong chemical bonds hold the diamond’s individual carbon atoms in a tight rigid crystal lattice. However, diamonds aren’t especially tough; that is, they aren’t highly resistant to fracture. As a result, they can be broken by objects composed of softer but tougher materials, such as certain metal alloys. In fact, a relatively weak blow by a metal hammer may be enough to defeat the rigidity of a diamond’s lattice, breaking the diamond into two or more pieces along a cleavage plane (that is, a weak region in the lattice). In contrast, because the hammerhead is tough, it is less likely to break during the strike. The metal alloy it’s made of deforms during the blow but then may return to its original shape. (That said, if the blow by the hammer is forceful enough, permanent deformation may occur, and the metal may chip or otherwise fracture.)

On a smaller scale, individual atoms, the tiniest units of matter that have the characteristic properties of a chemical element, can be broken into their constituent protons, neutrons, and electrons by striking them with atomic or subatomic particles that have been accelerated to high velocities. Protons and neutrons can in turn be broken into even smaller particles—quarks. In fact, it appears that, of all the known objects in the universe, only quarks, electrons, and other true elementary particles are unbreakable.