system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How exactly is spider silk stronger than steel, when your hand could easily cut through thick spider webs whereas a steel wire half the size would require a knife to cut through?
gpt
I think you're vastly overestimating the size of spider threads.  Spider draglines (the particularly strong silk threads usually measured) are about .00032 inch in diameter - or about 1/3000th of an inch.  A metal thread of that diameter would offer very little resistance to your hand as well.  Spider silk is slightly weaker than a steel wire of an equivalent diameter.  The "Twice as strong as steel" factoid you usually hear is actually comparing by *weight*.  Spider silk is much less dense than steel.