Little pressure needed to stab someone

Pioneering research into stabbing has revealed that the forces required to stab someone are frighteningly low.

Aisling Ní Annaidh, engineering lecturer at University College Dublin, has developed a formula to calculate the minimum force needed for a blade or implement to penetrate bare skin in a stabbing incident.

“My research showed that the force required to stab bare skin is surprisingly low,” said Dr Ní Annaidh. “It’s in the order of 10 to 20 newtons, which corresponds to the weight of a bag of flour of 1 to 2 kilos in your hand. That’s really not very much,.