Slashdot Mirror
Domain: 3m.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to 3m.com.
Stories · 3
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Hairy Adhesives
Ant writes "Science Daily has an article about scientists having found that the way spiders stick to ceilings could be the key to making Post-it notes that don't fall off even when they are wet. A team from Germany and Switzerland have made the first detailed examinations of a jumping spider's 'foot' and have discovered that a molecular force sticks the spider to almost anything. The force is so strong that these spiders could carry over 170 times their own body weight while standing on the ceiling. The research is published today (Monday 19 April 2004) in the Institute of Physics journal Smart Materials and Structures." Other researchers are actually exploring ways to make a sort of non-glue adhesive tape. -
New Joystick Style Ergo Mouse
Mr_Perl writes "For those of us who love to use a mouse to play games, except for the wrist pain after too much of it, 3M has come up with a joystick-mouse type thing that is in my opinion very comfortable to use." I'd love to try one of these out. Not available yet tho. update my bad, it is out. Now I gotta find one. -
Velcro Alternatives?
sniglet999 asks: "I've got a PDA and a Nokia cellphone that can connect to the net. However the IR port on the phone is on the side, and the port on the PDA is on the top. This means I've got to hold the two together, line of site for the connection to work (with increasingly cramping hands, I might add). The idea of mounting velcro to a notepad, so that you could stick the PDA and the phone in the proper position sounds good, but I don't want velcro and it's associated adhesive attached permanently to either expensive device. 3M has some cool hooks that adhere to the wall with a pull strip. Pull the strip and the hook is removed, leaving no residue on the wall. Is there something like this on a velcro backing? Is there another solution? (Short of making and attaching a light pipe. The whole objective behind all of this was to carry less)!" These aren't the "cool hooks" the submittor had in mind, but might these serve as a way of mitigating the problem (since they are self mating, they don't suffer the major problems of velcro). Does anyone else have alternatives to velcro which they use and prefer?