Take the 2-minute tour ×  In the wiki it is article only about
shear modulus and it is written that it's unit is Pascal. At the
same time in all researches about Red Blood Cells shear
stresses, authors write "in-plane shear stress" and measure it
in N/m. For instance, here -
http://web.mit.edu/spectroscopy/research/biomedresearch/B6.html
I can't understand why - perhaps it is a difference between in-
plane shear modulus and shear modulus. Or it is because membrane
is a surface in 3D, not the whole body. Any ideas?
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accepted  When we talk about shear stress and shear modulus
we're normally considering the deformation of a 3D body. However
the article you cite is not talking about deformation of a 3D
body but instead it's treating the surface of the erythrocyte as
a 2D object. That means they use a surface stress which is
probably better known as surface tension. This is similar to the
way you calculate the deformation of soap films.  Surface
tension (