New Bionic Material Even Sticks To Surfaces Underwater
I was always wondering how Spiderman could climb walls and whether his webbing could work underneath the water say if he was to stick to a submarine or something. Bugs as you know can crawl everywhere. I found some insects upside down on my plants and I wondered: 'How did they get there?' Well surface tension is at play (also insects have a weight strength distribution that is beyond our imagination just look at Antman). Insects use capillary forces with oil-covered adhesive called setae. But what happens when the it rains and the properties of the surface of the plant change.
Well scientists Gorb and Honosa published: 'Underwater locomotion in a terrestrial beetle: combination of surface de-wetting and capillary forces', Proceedings of the Royal Society B to describe this. The terrestrial leaf beetle.
The cool thing about the leaf beetle is it uses air bubbles trapped between their adhesive setae producing a boundary between the air, the liquid and the solid which ultimately produces capillary adhesion under water. One necessary requirement would be for the surface of the leaf but as you know many leaves (including the lotus) have hydrophobic property.
But what is this solid material (the Spiderman webbing) for the beetle. The solution was a micro structure they designed which is an 'artificial silicone polymer structure with underwater adhesive properties'.. One could think of any field of application for underwater technologies like optics or perhaps even allowing Spiderman to stick to a submarine better.
Citation: Naoe Hosoda and Stanislav N. Gorb, 'Underwater locomotion in a terrestrial beetle: combination of surface de-wetting and capillary forces', Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Published online before print August 8, 2012, doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.1297
I was always wondering how Spiderman could climb walls and whether his webbing could work underneath the water say if he was to stick to a submarine or something. Bugs as you know can crawl everywhere. I found some insects upside down on my plants and I wondered: 'How did they get there?' Well surface tension is at play (also insects have a weight strength distribution that is beyond our imagination just look at Antman). Insects use capillary forces with oil-covered adhesive called setae. But what happens when the it rains and the properties of the surface of the plant change.
Well scientists Gorb and Honosa published: 'Underwater locomotion in a terrestrial beetle: combination of surface de-wetting and capillary forces', Proceedings of the Royal Society B to describe this. The terrestrial leaf beetle.
The cool thing about the leaf beetle is it uses air bubbles trapped between their adhesive setae producing a boundary between the air, the liquid and the solid which ultimately produces capillary adhesion under water. One necessary requirement would be for the surface of the leaf but as you know many leaves (including the lotus) have hydrophobic property.
But what is this solid material (the Spiderman webbing) for the beetle. The solution was a micro structure they designed which is an 'artificial silicone polymer structure with underwater adhesive properties'.. One could think of any field of application for underwater technologies like optics or perhaps even allowing Spiderman to stick to a submarine better.
Citation: Naoe Hosoda and Stanislav N. Gorb, 'Underwater locomotion in a terrestrial beetle: combination of surface de-wetting and capillary forces', Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Published online before print August 8, 2012, doi: 10.1098/rspb.2012.1297
