  We present a model to study Young's modulus and Poisson's ratio of the
composite material of amorphous nanowires. It is an extension of the model
derived by two of us [Da Fonseca and Galvao, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 175502
(2004)] to study the elastic properties of amorphous nanosprings. The model is
based on twisting and tensioning a straight nanowire and we propose an
experimental setup to obtain the elastic parameters of the nanowire. We used
the Kirchhoff rod model to obtain the expressions for the elastic constants of
the nanowire.
