Slashdot Mirror
Nanotech Research Works Toward Artificial Muscles
An anonymous reader writes "Nanotech researchers are developing artificial muscles that convert chemical energy to mechanical energy. This ambitious project aims at making an artificial muscles from conducting polymers and carbon nanotubes that are chemically powered, like natural muscles, and exceed the force generation, contraction and speed of their natural counterpart. This work will lead to advanced limbs for amputees and robots."
If your bicept, for example, were to be attached ten times closer to the pivit point of your elbow, your muscle would need to exert ten times the force in order to do the same work.
First off, it's biceps. And the biceps acts in the opposite direction, the fulcrum in that case would be the shoulder, not the elbow. And what you are describing is a fucking arm not an individual muscle. Muscles contract lengthwise. That's all they do. Go get an anatomy textbook. You need one.
How is your reading comprehension? Was this article (or quote thereof) referencing an 'artificial arm'? No. It was talking about an artificial muscle. A fiber which can contract lengthwise, exerting a force, just like a muscle.
So they, in the article are comparing the force and contraction by some strands of this material, and comparing that to the the force and contraction exerted by a similar amount (by weight or thickness, it doesn't reveal) of natural muscle.