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The World's Strongest Glue
missing_myself writes "Yahoo news reports the world's strongest glue is made by bacteria. "The adhesive can withstand an enormous amount of stress, equal to the force felt by a quarter with more than three cars piled on top of it." Time to get rid of the duct tape? "
Blasphemy!
And does it dissolve after being exposed to air?
Stop the world; I need to get off.
Or something close... it was alive and sticky, that's for sure.
If it's that sticky, how do we ever get it out of the bottle?
On another note, this stuff would would really make the old glue-friend's-hand-to-forehead-or-other-body-part prank very painful...
How much do you want to bet that the glue only lives up to these claims on one substance in the entire universe ... dry human skin (i.e. fingers)?
Horses everywhere rejoice.
This will mark the end of grandmas loosing their dentures while skydiving.
I'd never heard of this new "cars/quarter" unit (invented by the same guy who gave us the LoC unit, presumably), so I had to look it up to see that this glue can hold around 10,000 psi (70,000 kPa).
Ewige Blumenkraft.
"One possibility would be as a biodegradable surgical adhesive."
Now I can see surgical scissors being left in your abdomen and crazy-glued to your internal organs.
I'm sure Elmer will say they have a patent on sticking one thing to another. Or maybe that was the Porn Industry's patent.
"There are obvious applications since this adhesive works on wet surfaces,"
"We tried washing the glue off," Brun said. "It didn't work."
Rod Taylor
Apparently something similar happened with Teflon too. The engineers at Dupont spent a very long time trying to get it to adhere to various surfaces. Teflon is so non-sticky that it took them years to get it to stick to metal pots and pans. Finally they came up with techniques of multiple layering and various methods to bake it on. More at http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a4_173.html
B: Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
P: Uh... I think so Brain, but where will we find that much caulobacter crescentus, three cars, and a quarter at this time of night?
Three cars per quarter? I don't get it. How much is that in Eiffel Towers per square millicubit?
"Time to get rid of the duct tape?"
Get rid of it?! No way! I say improve it. Imagine duct tape combined with this supersuperglue. My God, it'd be like Astroboy and Atlas working together to defeat a common foe!
Or something.
Would the force change if 3 cars were piled onto a surface that was 1 square meter - no....
Well, if there's more surface area, then there's a wider distribution of weight and the pressure per square inch would diminish.
How strong is this glue under tension and shear?
I have an invisible glue here that can withstand an infinite amount of force under compression, and it is massless. Tension is a while 'nother matter.
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
"But how does it *taste*?"
This glue tastes like... burning.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
"The single-celled bacterium uses sugar molecules to stay put in rivers, streams, and water pipes, a new study found."
Now... if I feed it something (like, I guess sugar), would it grow though? Imagine the instructions: "mix with sugar 4:1"...
And further, if I use it to glue a broken sugar bowl, should I expect a self-replicating glue disaster?
"It's not clear how the glue actually works, however, but researchers presume some special proteins must be attached to the sugars."
Well that sounds ensuring, right guys. Reminds me of that movie, The Stuff (1985).
A bunch of scientists like our folks here, discover weird white substance on one of the Earth Poles (please save me the jokes on what you think it was). So naturally, what you think he does? He tastes it, and it's good.
So they just come with the tankers and start pumping it out and selling it as food. Turns out it eats you from the inside and turns you into a zombie.
By the way, has anyone tried to eat that glue and see what it tastes like?
I mean, the duct-tape has a gummy glue that dries out, the fibrous tape tears easily, has poor high-temperature properties, and is not waterproof. What more could you want?
--- Jason Olshefsky
Karma: Poser (mostly affected by adding this line long after everyone else did)
Something to keep the chairs planted firmly on the floor at Micorsoft!
I remember when Eastman 910 was sold at retail back in the mid-seventies. That stuff was incredible (it was eventually diluted and sold as Crazy Glue) all you had to do was got a tiny drop of it on your hands and touch something and the only way you'd get it off was to lose skin. I accidentally glued my left index finger to my forehead ... not funny. No, not funny at all. We eventually discovered that acetone would dissolve it but in the meantime I had my goddamn hand stuck to my head for several hours. A friend of my mothers' glued her hand to her nose. Now that was funny. And it happened instantly, you didn't get a chance to pull it loose.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Bacteria are known to mutate, right?
Some mutations spread uncontrollably, known fact.
Sugar is one of more common substances in the world.
Imagine the world where stepping on the grass means they have to amputate your legs to free you. And the glue infection spreading, things getting gradually more sticky everywhere. Up to the point when everyone is glued to the ground, and everything that moves, stops. Entropic death, no more movement.
I for one welcome our sticky bacterial overlords.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
It can keep my wife's mouth shut for even just an hour....