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Scientists Developing Commercially Viable Synthetic Gecko
Gordon from Seattle writes to mention a CNN article about a new way to hang out. A British aerospace team is working on a super-sticky substance they're calling "Synthetic Gecko". It mimics the hairs on a gecko's foot, and may eventually be developed as a reusable adhesive. From the article: "Each of the microscopic setae on a gecko's foot has a mushroom shaped cap on the end, less than one-thousandth of a millimeter across. This ensures that the gecko's foot is in very close contact with the surface beneath. The cumulative attractive force, called van der Waals force, of these setae allows the lizard to scurry up walls and ceilings, and even hang from polished glass surfaces. In 2003 scientists at the University of Manchester produced a one centimeter patch of 'gecko tape,' but neither the University of Manchester nor University of California teams managed to produce the material in a greater quantity, unlike Haq and Sargent, who have already tested areas larger than 10 centimeters-squared."
I can hardly wait! When this is out I can /really/ play Spiderman!!
This story is reminiscent of the intrepid discoverers of the elusive Velcro animal of 40 years ago.
Every surface outside of a clean room is coated with dust. Unless there is some cleaning mechanism, this will clog with dust and become non-sticky. Geckos probably lick their feet clean every once in a while, or have some other bio-mechanism to decontaminate their feet. How will this syntha-gecko sticky pad keep clean?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
We're lucky they found it before it was hunted to extinction by the naugabeast.
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I've seen a lizard leap onto a pane of glass and scurry up - almost gave up the hunt but I didn't want it freaking me out in the middle of the night. They're as sticky as that protective film that people never remove from the plastic faceplates on radios /and/ they change colors, formidable pests. If only we could crack the secrets of lizard technology.. Cars that run on flies with tires that could adhere to any surface...
That will come as a great relief to the gecko population around my neighbourhood - which I hunt and tie to my hands and feet to I can hang out on the ceiling.
Can you imagine the rock climbing possibilities!
As a rock climber, this is too cool.
Trad, Sport and Gecko? That would be something.
{insert Mozilla joke here}
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Geckoes continually "shed" the hair on their feet, and regrow new hairs. So any hairs that do happen to get extremely dirty are naturally discarded after some time, and replaced with newly-grown clean hairs.
Tastes just like real gecko!
One square meter of the stuff on a small family sized car could save you up to 15%
[/sarcasm]
Greptile
Worked pretty well, and even improved the grip between the gloves and stuff that didn't have the material on it. Only problem was the haird tend to wear out/fall off over time, so now those gloves have a few bald spots where the rubberish material has worn through and they aren't nearly as grippy
Tm
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Before you even try...Do NOT use this to masturbate!!! Seriously, you WILL regret it.
I keep waiting for someone to make these into Spidey gloves... would be pretty cool at first, til everyone realizes they don't lock their attic windows. Companies wondering how someone got inside when everything was locked, etc... it would completely change security practices. Pretty neat though when they figure out someone crawled in a skylight, across the ceiling and down the wall behind the cameras.
Still I hope someone makes these, it'll start some new extreme sport craze... wall-ball or something. Whee!
Cwm, fjord-bank glyphs vext quiz
1st of all this is not going to work for your average adult human.
Why you might ask? Well I knew you would, well at least in your head.
Besides sticking to things, you have to take into consideration basic human body mechanics. Yeah I know, reality is so pesky! Consider things that climb, and climb well. Lizards, Monkeys, insects, all the fauna in natures lovely wild kingdom. What do they all in common? Well, since you asked, and I knew you would, even if it was in your own head. Here is your answer:
ALL of these creatures have equal length limbs!
Yes even or favorite relative, the chimpanzee. Also, in proportion to their size, they are all also endowed with vastly more muscle strength then humans. Ever seen your favorite monkey / gorilla play with a steel belted radial? They fling the thing around like we would a hula-hoop!
No not wanting to be a TOTAL kill-joy, I can see where humans could have lots of fun with this, but don't expect to see your average nerd/geek scaling a glass tower anytime soon. Our legs are way to long. Our arms are way to short and week in comparison to our legs and or climbing posture would be all wrong, with our asses hanging out into the breeze.
Being a pretty damn good rock climber myself, I can see some wonderful advantages I could have, but its not as great as everyone things its going to be. Gloves and shoes? Well that great and all, but you have to consider what is taking our full body weight. Good climbers, and I know some really good ones, can do one finger pull-ups, they are that strong, but a glove is going to exert the wrong kind of pressure/grip. Perhaps you might not slip, but you will have to keep your fingers curled over whatever you are using for a hand hold, and that still will lead to finger / hand fatigue that every climber experiences.
Perhaps a glove and shoe will be engineered that will evenly distribute the strain along the length of the forearm and the length and contours of the ankle and calf, but until then its going to still be a clumsy system that will put even more strain on our joints and limbs that already badly designed for climbing vertical surfaces.
Hey KID! Yeah you, get the fuck off my lawn!
And let's not forget the mass-extinction event of the Polyestrian era in the late 20th century.
It might not scale for other reasons, but it DEFINITELY doesn't scale for the same reason any surface effect doesn't scale.
We're going to make something 10x as long (which assumes a ~20 cm Gecko to get to man-sized, which I think is generous.)
So the surface area of the giant-gecko feet are 100x bigger. (10^2 - because you have length and width) But the Gecko ways 1000x as much (lenght, width, depth) So for a 10x scaling factor in length, you have 10x more mass PER surface area - in other words you stick 10x LESS well if you make a giant Gecko. Real Geckos have pretty big feet, too - and a cousin-post listed all sorts of reasons why humans aren't evolved to be surface-climbers.
But the other BIG thing to remember is that most surfaces are simply not made to have a hundred-fifty lbs STUCK to them. Have you ever tried to glue anything heavy to a painted wall? If you're lucky the glue fails and the thing falls. If you're unlucky the wall surface (paint) fails and a big piece rips off. If you're MORE unlucky the WALL fails - you do know that interior walls are NOT structural - they're just fireproofing. Only the studs are EVER structural. Drywall can't hold 20lbs sideways and never 150 lbs straight down. Most ceilings are actually worse for this...
And if you're falling because this happened, the chunk will be stuck to you, stopping you from catching yourself on anything else.
So in effect your spidey suit can only work where you have certain kinds of exposed structural materials, and even then a fair bit of luck and care.
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