  A procedure to characterize the electrical and mechanical properties of
micro-fibers is presented here. As the required equipment can be found in many
teaching laboratories, it can be carried out by physics and
mechanical/electrical engineering students. The electrical resistivity, mass
density and Young's modulus of carbon micro-fibers have been determined using
this procedure, obtaining values in very good agreement with the reference
values. The Young's modulus has been obtained by measuring the resonance
frequency of carbon fiber based cantilevers. In this way, one can avoid common
approaches based on tensile or bending tests which are difficult to implement
for microscale materials. Despite the simplicity of the experiments proposed
here, they can be used to trigger in the students interest on the electrical
and mechanical properties of microscale materials.
