Hang this from the lower end of the strand, and gradually fill it with sand until the strand breaks.

Then watch how many inches of rope can be lifted off the table before the strand breaks.

The 8 kDa domain has lyase activity that can remove a 5' deoxyribosephosphate group from the end of a strand break.

The degradation occurs as depurinations resulting in random strand breaks.

Double strand breaks occur as intermediates after the cross links are removed.

This makes sense because if one strand breaks, all the other fibers may remain intact and the rope/string does not break.

The damage usually detected are single strand breaks and double strand breaks.

However this is not true, both single- and double strand breaks are also detected in neutral conditions.

Double strand breaks are also generated during repair of DNA cross links.

Mammalian cells cannot efficiently repair these double strand breaks.