The circular argument behind spider and silkworm silk mechanical properties

This project challenges the common notion that spider silk always has superior mechanical properties compared to silkworm silk by re-evaluating how the cross-sectional area of silks from these two sources is calculated. It highlights that assuming silkworm silk is circular, rather than its true ribbon-like shape, artificially reduces its measured mechanical properties. This data set represents the raw data for Figures 1 in the paper <i>“The Circular Argument Behind Spider and Silkworm Silk Mechanical Properties.”</i>In Figure 1, we compared the perceived circular cross-sectional area to the actual measured cross-sectional area across 16 silkworm species. we then used the corrected values to calculate the true mechanical properties of silkworm silk and compare them with spider silk.<br>