A question on pressure and blunt force

[Mea quidem sententia]

I'm going to use a fictional character and Wonder Woman works for this, since she's know to be vulnerable to sharp objects, but not blunt objects. This makes sense because a smaller surface area doesn't have to work against many atoms. Well, let's say a pointed object produces 10 newtons, whereas a blunt object produces 100 newtons. It's obvious the latter produced more force, but my question is even though more force came from the blunt object, does this mean that even if Wonder Woman could resist 100 newtons, that she'd still be vulnerable to 10 newtons, simply because it's sharp?

[Vannak]

Mea quidem sententia

I'm going to use a fictional character and Wonder Woman works for this, since she's know to be vulnerable to sharp objects, but not blunt objects. This makes sense because a smaller surface area doesn't have to work against many atoms. Well, let's say a pointed object produces 10 newtons, whereas a blunt object produces 100 newtons. It's obvious the latter produced more force, but my question is even though more force came from the blunt object, does this mean that even if Wonder Woman could resist 100 newtons, that she'd still be vulnerable to 10 newtons, simply because it's sharp?

basically, yes. For a comparative view, you can think of skin as a rubber sheet. A blunt object causes a depression in the sheet but the curvature is never too great. With a sharp point, a smaller force can produce greater curvature over a smaller region. You really only care about causing a catastrophic curvature which breaks the material. The more flexible the model rubber sheet is the more the shape of the tool used matters.

[Mea quidem sententia]

Vannak

Mea quidem sententia

I'm going to use a fictional character and Wonder Woman works for this, since she's know to be vulnerable to sharp objects, but not blunt objects. This makes sense because a smaller surface area doesn't have to work against many atoms. Well, let's say a pointed object produces 10 newtons, whereas a blunt object produces 100 newtons. It's obvious the latter produced more force, but my question is even though more force came from the blunt object, does this mean that even if Wonder Woman could resist 100 newtons, that she'd still be vulnerable to 10 newtons, simply because it's sharp?

basically, yes. For a comparative view, you can think of skin as a rubber sheet. A blunt object causes a depression in the sheet but the curvature is never too great. With a sharp point, a smaller force can produce greater curvature over a smaller region. You really only care about causing a catastrophic curvature which breaks the material. The more flexible the model rubber sheet is the more the shape of the tool used matters.

I suppose I find it odd that 10 N could harm someone who could resist 100 N. Well, if that's the case, thank you for explaining that. I would have went on Google to search for an answer, but either Google doesn't give me an answer I'm looking for, or I just ask in ways where it doesn't understand and gives me all sorts of results.

[Vannak]

It's not so weird when you realize it's about force divided by area, the pressure. Small or sharp things have less contact area and thus have a larger pressure.

Comparing pressure won't get you an exact scale for damage, but you'll get a lot closer than just looking at force.

Example: A baseball bat can probably make contact with about 1/5 of a square meter of body. A sword, swung with the sharp edge towards you, may be about .25 meters long and 1/2 mm wide, giving you a contact surface area of about 0.000125 square meters.

If you swing both with 50 newton's, you'll get (50/.2 =) 250 pascals of pressure with the bat. You'll get (50/.000125 =) 400,000 pascals with the sword.
400 with the sword.

This isn't real physics, pressure totally isn't the only or most important factor when it comes to weapons and body damage, but I hope it explains your particular confusion.