what changes in the structure of an object that allows something to permanently bend (i.e folding paper)
In: Physics
Every material has what’s called an elastic limit. When you stretch/strain a material past this limit the deformation stops being reversible, a *plastic deformation*. If you look up a stress vs strain graph the linear part at the beginning is the elastic part.
When you stretch something into the plastic zone and let go of it, before a certain point of stress it will shrink back and recover the same amount it would if you held it at the elastic limit, it just wont go all the way back to normal
For paper this limit is probably really low and the cellular thing that happens with folding is explained better in here, you don’t have to actually fold paper to get it to have a permanent deformation though
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