Slashdot Mirror
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."
Also, according to Spiderman the movie, which is in no way an authoritative source, Spiderman had little jagged, blade things that came out of his hand. So when he lays the smackdown on somebody you can bet it leaves a mark.
-Look lively. LOOK LIVELY!!! --Mr. Shmallow
It's not the same story. The one before was about discovering how geckos stick to things. This one is about synthesizing a kind of sticky tape which uses the same "approach".
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
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.
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!
Can you say 1 mile per gallon and a top speed of about 25 miles per hour?
Rolling resistance of tires made with this stuff would have to be insanely high.
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.