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Gecko Feet Inspire Sticky Tape
Makarand writes "Geckos have the remarkable ability to climb the most smooth surfaces and hang from
glass ceilings with a single toe. Their feet are covered with millions of nanoscopic keratin
hairs that can exert an intermolecular force - called van der Waals force - producing
an adhesive effect on surfaces they walk on. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have been able to
mimic the
adhesive ability of Gecko feet with a synthetic material that could find applications
in new types of vehicle tires or allowing robots to climb walls. The material is made
by using a mould created by a lithographic process and consists of a flexibile and strong
substrate covered with 100 million nanoscopic hair each centimetre square.
It might take several more years before Gecko tape is made commercially available to the wanna-be Spiderman, but he will have to thank the Gecko for that, not the spider."
but how exactly do you store thousands of geckos with their backs glued to a roll of plastic ?
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
Decent name. Although, I would have prefered: climb der waals.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Spiderman sounds way cooler than Geckoman though. I mean, what's Geckoman going to use instead of a web-shooter, his super long tongue shooter? Who would make a comic book character that does such a silly thing. Oh...wait...
Vonal Declosion
I actually saw this on TV this morning. I think this is the first time ever that something appeared there before on /. Whats happening.
But this does sound like seriously cool stuff. You could freak out people with it. Hang on the ceiling and wait for your mum/wife/girlfriend to come home and then jump down. Fun!
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
Until this...
Maybe now I can actually put cat5 accrossing my ceilng and not have it fall down all the time.
They's already Gecko Tape. In multi colours too.
. . . can it help you save on your car insurance?
Oh wait, that's Geico not . . . uh nevermind
so you are saying that to become spider-man, i just need a lot of tiny hair in my palms / fingers, right?
I'll start working on that right now! who can wait that few years before this stuff is commercially available, when you can produce it safely* and natually?
*safely - wear goggles.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Argh! Whenever I read Gecko I feel an instant itch to fire up Regedit...
Same story reported by CNN and commented here :)
- Raynet --> .
It might take several more years before Gecko tape is made commercially available to the wanna-be Spiderman, but he will have to thank the Gecko for that, not the spider."
Well if you were a wanna-be Spiderman wouldn't you have the spider to thank aswell?
--
Oh I can see it now; 'Gecko-man...Gecko-man...does whatever a Gecko can...'
No, somehow it doesn't have quite the same ring to it. Oh well.
There are 10 kinds of people; those who know ternary, those who don't, and those now hunting for a dictionary.
There's a nice picture in this version of the article.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Or screw in some tracks.
I just looked under my copy of Mozilla 1.3 and it doesn't appear to have any feet. WTF?
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Geckoman, Geckoman
does whatever a Gecko can
sticks to wall, any type
catches thieves just like flies
look out here comes the Geckoman
So how much "sticky tape" can one have to certain weights/newtons?
Will a tyre foot print be enough for cars or do we need a football pitch size sticky tape?
Can 2 tonne car going at 100kph stick round any corner ? And will we then need tilting cars, like the tgv and bullet trains ?
For practical use we need to develop a super quick stick / unstick method for tires , climbers.
Question, questions....
My other Sig is very funny.
http://www.nature.com/nsu/020826/020826-2.html
Aug 2002... "Researchers have created two prototype glues after confirming that geckos owe their amazing ability to scamper across ceilings and cling to polished glass solely to many thousands of tiny, spatula-tipped split hairs on their toes.hese bond weakly with the molecules in any surface on which the lizards run.
The scientists, based at the University of California at Berkeley, cast two sets of imitation gecko toe hairs. Their mould was a microfilter with which biologists usually remove bacteria from solutions. They then tipped the hairs with silicon rubber or polyester.
In the lab, both materials adhered as well to most surfaces as the natural wall-crawlers. "
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20020826/geck o.html
"Aug. 27 [2002] -- Research into the gravity-defying acts of geckos, which can scale smooth walls in seconds and support their weight by a single toe, has led to a prototype "gecko glue" that one day may help a small robot walk surfaces in spac"
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/10/18/03840/816
...
"And if it [mass producing synthetic gecko glue] doesn't, we can harvest setae from geckos as they shed their skin and setae every few months. It's not mass-production, but it would provide plenty of setae for the micro-applications."
Oct 18th, 2002
Gecko-man is much less cool a name than Spider-man.
Stéphane "Alias" Gallay
Now, where did I put this witty quote?..
....that Mozilla's Gecko has a multitude of uses. ;-)
my mozilla sticks so close to my heart um gesh de bork bork bork!
100 million nanoscopic hair each centimetre square
Is it just me or also you? I think you talk like Dr. Seuss too.
Don't forget:
you know, he gets more airtime than spiderman, for sure... and he comes fully insured! Parker is probably harder to get coverage for than Jackie Chan...
My life in the land of the rising sun.
Gecko tape following up Duck tape,
there is a pattern here!!
I want my karma, and I want it now!
You don't need expensive research or fancy nanohairs : just wear ski boots for a full month without taking them off and we'll guarantee your feet will become sticky enough to climb any smooth surface.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
This work actually originates in Bob Full's Polypedal Lab at Berkeley. Check out this SF Chronicle article published in 2000 to find out a little more.
He could just totally awe the enemy by LICKING HIS OWN EYEBALL and keeping a straight face. I always thought that was weird.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
When you multiply a radius of a 3D object by 10, you get 100 times bigger area with 1000 times bigger volume and mass.
Gecko can climb walls and ceilings because it is so small that ratio between touching area and mass is quite large. Humans would need to have huge hands to achieve same kind of ratio.
I hate to ask the blindingly obvious, but if you have a roll of this super sticky tape how do you un-roll it? If it is strong enough to stick me to the roof I would have thought that if I exerted enough force to unstick it the ceiling board would come down too. Anything this powerful would be banned before the end of the first week. I can see the fun to be had with a roll of double-sided tape; almost as much fun as the original strength super glue and a telephone handset. Oooh I'm getting all excited now, I can feel the dark side coming closer....
While I have not studied the domestic gecho, I can already see an application releasing existing things we have from postit notes (you can't really clean them) to velcro. Not to speak of velvet padding based on the gecho material to help anchor something in the event of earthquake... this fall under the catagory of cool beans.
Presently, with the exception of that 3m postit stuff, the only thing we have close to a reuseable adheasive that I know about is spray glue. Per the instructions on the can you apply, let dry, and it in theory stays sticky. As long as you don't mind running the risk of having green goo stuck to places. Double stick tape is also a current product i've used to mount stuff with the intent of having it removable. It's only a soso solution.
I'd be hip to a gecho solution.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Check out this video footage to see the gecko in action. (The video is about biomimetic robots, so it's got more than just the gecko research)
...just think of all the research it took to get there. All those gecko amputees, hobbling around with no feet.
How did you think they found what they were made of? A magnifying glass? Invite a gecko into a scanning electron microscope, and ask it to place it's foot on the sample platform and hold still? They don't make pressure suits that small, anyway.
...obviously this one
Wonder what would happen if you stuck a Gecko to this tape?
Omnis amans amens
The act of peeling tape is to apply a large force to a small area of the tape, overcomming the adhesion locally.
A Gecko may well use the same trick.
Consider this experiment: Paint your hand and plant it flat on a piece of paper. Lift your hand and the paper comes too.
Try it again but this time peel your hand away palm first then fingers then finger tips. The paper stays on the table.
This is how Spider Man does it, rent the DVD and use slow motion - It's True!
...a roaming hoard of starving rabid emaciated weasels have been inspiring the corporate folks at SCO. ....Oh hold it wait, I don't want to give a hoard of starving rabid emaciated weasels a bad name.
to clean the "flexibile (sic) and strong substrate covered with 100 million nanoscopic hair each centimetre square."
In other news... the sticky gecko patent.
Sco has been reported as using the "sticky gecko patent grabber", for those unfamilar this loveable little creature spends it's life climing up stacks of patents and attaches it self to the one you wish to lay a claim to. This was inspired by Kat in RedDwarf, "This is mine, that is mine, this is all mine".
IBM in responce has employed the use of their teenage ninga mutent ninga lawyers(TM) but presently have no defence for the sticky gecko rectroactive claim. "You try to pry it off and it just gets stuck to you, and suddenly you are the property of SCO".
SCO's defence of their use of this creature has been, "This is mine, that is mine, this is all mine".
At present, the IP of the sticky gecko patent grabber is in dispute, those critical have been known to say, "this is a really stupid idea", but strangly enough the case seems to hold some water as no one ever thought patent the idea of stealing other people's work.
Hmmm. Hydrogen bonds are an order of magnitude stronger than van der Waals IM bonds. One practical effect of the strength of H-bonds is that water is liquid instead of gas at room temperature.
I wonder if anyone is working on an H-bond version of this stuff. Presumably, you could use 1/30th the material. Makes me wonder if you could space it out more and make it easier to peel off.
Anyone know if there are critters that use H-bonds for the same function a Gecko uses dipole-dipole stickies? If not, any ideas why? Do H-bonds just not work for this purpose, or are they selected against for some reason?
Wow looks like somebody with no sense of humor is modding today.
In the future nerds, geeks, and dweebs of all variety will swear not by the power of duct tape to fix all problems, but gecko tape.
Cyde Weys Musings - Scrutinizing the inscrutable
3M make a tape called 'Greptile" that Pearl Izumi made into a set of matching handlebar tape and cycling glove. Each has lots of microscopic protrusions that make the things stick like crazy to each other - not sure how microscopic, but the ads always had EM photos of the surface. 3M also sells the raw tape. Reviews are great, but it never really caught on. For most cyclists, increased padding is prolly preferred over increased grip - you can always squeeze harder.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Why do people have to make up new words when the term 'microscopic' is what we are really talking about. Anything that you can't see with the naked eye is microscopic...Smacks of 'hey let's throw in some high tech sounding buzzword so it looks even cooler than it is' to me.
Not that it isn't cool. It is. I want my Spider Man gloves!
CRASH!!! ..... FREEZE ...... [frenzied submit
clicking] .... BANG!
In all seriousness though this could be cool for so many things, walking about in zero g (not as much fun, I know) , professional thieves will love it (they're probably stealing some now). The list just goes on.
Extended Warranty? How can I lose!
Keach, playing a cop, turns into a half-man-half-lizard after smoking too much high grade gear.
Funny as fuck.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
I>several more years before Gecko tape is made commercially available
The stuff already grows naturally on Geckos. Who wants to start a joint venture Gecko farm with me!
Where is the outcry over this shameless THEFT of the gecko's intellectual property??
And you could end up having to apply depilatories to unstick your GeckoBots? Or your Geckos... in which case you'd have one massively angry gecko horde on your hands... but you'd be the only one still able to climb the walls to get away...
"I'd say 'Have a good time,' but arson is still illegal.
As a CMU grad, I can say that none of us really needed help getting our hands sticky. Oops, did I say that out loud? I guess that's what happens when you go to a school that had a 70/30 ratio (I heard it may be better now) and was right down the street from Pitt. Mmmmmm...sticky hands...*drooling*
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
If Geckoman has as tongue shooter. Farscape's D'Argo that has adaptive venoms that are able to stun or kill any villian (or telemarketer) in the neighbourhood.
I heard an interview with the scientist this morning on BBC Radio 4. The news reader asked him 3 or 4 times what were the potential uses for the tape. Every single time the scientist shot off at a tangent talking about the science and properties of the tape. "blah blah you can wipe dirt off blah blah blah it's dry blah blah blah" At the end of the 3-4 minute interview he still hadn't answered the question. The news reader laughed and said something along the lines of "you never answered the question. Next on the news is ...".
Pinky: "What are we going to do tomorrow night Brain?"
Brain: "I would tell you Pinky but this 120 char limi
It won't work for tyres.
By the very nature of car tyres, they wear.
I would say that the nanoscopic hairs would have been broken down by the third or fourth revolution of the tyre.
At last, I sick and tired of being stuck at 5.9
or allowing robots to climb walls
Fudge them! I want to climb the walls!
Gecko's can regrow hairs if they break off... sticky tape can't.
Neil Stephenson predicted this idea in Snow Crash, when he described smartwheels!
"Bitten by a radioactive gecko, Peter Parker..." Nawww, just doesn't sound right.
But seriously, the original gecko research was done at my old alma mater, Lewis & Clark College. The story of their discovery was covered last summer on Slashdot and elsewhere , but the source articles have expired and Lewis & Clark is getting no credit today. Bummer.
essentially the same phenomenon has been studied in spiders and beetles
Snow Crash's smartwheels have nothing to do with this. They're for shock absorption, not stickiness. And each telescoping foot is the size of a coin, a far cry from the gecko's nanoscopic scale. Guh.
What Would Jesus Do
(for a Klondike bar)?
na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na GECKO MAN!
Slashdot Eds Link Anonymous Posts With Logged Posts
They Are Vermin Feeding On Each Other's Feces.
I Hate \.
Seriously, I'm looking at this article and thinking, it could hold x-and-so weight per square centimeter, to release you peel from the side slowly, it loses its stickiness with multiple uses, it's too expensive to make right now and it's a little bit fragile... Just exactly how superior would this be to -- ta dum -- a roll of heavy-grade packing tape? Other than the expense and the fragility of it, it seems to have accomplished basically the same traits.
Maybe the normal tape leaves behind a film of adhesive, where this doesn't? And this is faster to apply and release -- though only for Geckos so far? The accomplishments and accolades should pile up any minute. (Beat. Beat. Still waiting...)
I'll take Tape Woman and her sidekick, Post-it Gal, over whoever this Gecko-based hero is -- at least for now.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
Whenever we do that we have to get out of the way of a train.
I can't wait 'til they have climbing shoes with "gecko rubber" instead of Stealth rubber. 5.12, here I come!
-Thomas
you won't be able to jump up!
If you made gloves and socks out of this stuff, anyone who could climb a ladder could climb the most technical cliffs on Earth. See Yosimite from a whole new vantage point. Climb up the side of Shiprock. Heck, climb your house. All with no skill.
simply write a XUL interface to re-use gecko's parts?
> It might take several more years before Gecko tape is made commercially available
-><- no
I don't quite know when, and I gotta get to class in 3 minutes, so I don't care.
Peace
Love
WTF? Penguin? Duck? Huh?
Geckos are living critters, this stuff isn't. If you base a robot on this stuff, I'm guessing it will work for a day, then fall off the ceiling when the fibers are worn down. Keratin is the big clue there. It's the same protein that's in our fingernails.
So, is the Mozilla project going to have to rename its rendering engine now? :-(
Notice the hyphen please. Marvel Comics thanks you!
Military uses of this are wide and deep, both in use and the opening of pockets. Climbing gear, enhanced traction for military vehicles, missle and pod attachment systems, the list goes on.
e cts/node9 .html
The non-military applications are equally boundless, how do you want your matrix like decent from a burning building, lugged out by a fireman or walk, well wall-fly down?
"(Lattice Materials") are highly porous materials in which the solid material forms a hierarchical truss structure similar to that of the Eiffel Tower but, of course, much smaller in size..."
Lattice materials are commonly linked to porous metals but buckminsterfullerine and others are also classed in this category.
Metal foam and aerogels also come under the header of ultra light materials but are random in nature.
This is a URL after a brief search.
http://www.math.psu.edu/xu/research/proj
An age ago a gentleman who is a quite brilliant practical mathematician intervened in a newsgroup. I have lost details of this. I emailed him about his signature line concerning lattice materials guessing what they were and received a brief understandable explaination of them. About three emails later I'd asked him if he had any, he did not but was soliciting venture capital to explore making them. He seemed quite hesitant to even admit this, I think it was the taint the internet would give to any announcment of such a venture.
I really wonder if anything came of it, I don't see any product available in the few minutes I looked.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
Waitaminute, is this Gecko a magic sticky-tape like technology, a browser engine, or an open source database? I'm sooo confused!
1. Clone a gecko.
2. Peel the skin off his feet and throw the rest away.
3. Repeat as desired.
"The advanced societies of the future will be driven by competing systems of psychopathology." -JG Ballard
As a peeping tom in these days of high-rise apartment blocks, I can safely say that this is one technology I'll be able to put to use immediately.
Thanks, science!
Unfortunately, none of the links work anymore... but if I recall correctly, one of the articles speculated about using the discovery for this kind of thing. So it's cool to see this actually pan out. Of course, they also speculated about armies of fire-fighting robot geckos...
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
I believe you can easily remove the tape from another substance by pulling on the edge. So just lift up the heel of your hand (and keep going up from there) and you should be able to remove your hands easily.
The only problem (and something they'll probably be able to work out eventually) is making the hairs last long enough for this to be durable
"Geckos have the remarkable ability to climb the most smooth surfaces ..."
So how many smooth surfaces can they climb? Or did you mean: "Geckos have the remarkable ability to climb the smoothest surfaces ?
My English Teacher wife has been bemoaning the inability of modern youngsters to use comparative and superlative adjectives and I could never, until now, find such a clear example of the ambiguity such crippled expression can create.
It will stick in my mind like.....ahhh.. Gecko feet.
Gecko tape would be cool, but does it work again once you've stuck it to something? I hope it's not all static either so it immediately tries to stick to itself when you unroll it.