When media around the world this summer wrote about research that had revealed which type of paper gives the worst paper cuts, it sounded like something out of a newspaper satire section. But it wasn't. Behind the research are Kaare Hartvig Jensen and a couple of DTU colleagues, who have identified paper of about 65 micrometers thick as the most dangerous.
The idea to investigate a phenomenon that most people know all too well, but probably just curse at and perhaps put a band-aid on, came about during the corona lockdown, when the associate professor had extra time to read—and was exposed to more paper cuts than usual.
"It was probably the fact that I was annoyed at cutting my fingers combined with an intuition that it's a well-defined scientific question that you would be able to find an answer to," explains the physicist.
Curiosity as driving force
It is Kaare Hartvig Jensen's very nature to investigate everyday phenomena in order to understand their inner workings—and he finds time for it every week in his well-organized calendar.
This curiosity makes him part of a long tradition that French scientists in particular have carried on, and which to this day makes researchers study, for example, how soap bubbles get their shape, or why necklaces hang around a neck like they do.
"It's a tradition where various well-known researchers have spent some of their time studying some very simple problems to everyday problems. It is basically a desire to understand our surrounding world better, without making the matter too complex," he elaborates.
The researchers have used knowledge from the paper cut project to make a cheap scalpel (a plastic handle with a paper blade 65 micrometers thick) that can cut meat and vegetables—and gelatin, which was the medium the researchers had to use in the absence of test subjects willing to expose their fingers to the study.
