Monday, April 7, 2014
Mysteries of Spider Silk
Spider silk its like the AK-47 of nature. One can stretch the silk, bend it, and dry it out and it will still be stronger ten steel. Silk is 5 time stronger then steel and can snap back to original form after being stretched out. Kevlar can't even compete, spider silk is stronger then that too. Old spectroscopy research has now shed light on how to get spider silk. On
January 27, in apaper in the journal Nature Materials, a student at Stadford, Kristie
Koski described how she was able to non-invasively, examine the mechanical properties of an whole spider web just as it was spun by the spider that created it. She used the technique called Brillouin spectroscopy. This technique shoots lasers of light on spider silk and reflects back to the spectrometer. This sends a vibration like song back to the instrument and then the spider silk can be measured to see how much tension it can take. Using this method Koski can study complete spider webs and not just single strand. A surprising note to Koski's team is that the stiffness of the web varies among fibers,
intersection points, and glue spots. The team think this is because the webs had to withstand the weather. This article explains why this might have happened in more detail. I hope with this research we can finally use the spider webs genetic design to make this word a better place.
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I have also heard that if the golden gate bridge used spider silk instead of steel cables, that the cables diameter would be vastly reduced to a few inches or something like that. I'd love to see what they can do with spider silk in the future
ReplyDeleteWatching spiders spin silk and wrap up insects is eerily beautiful, and makes you wonder how they were able to evolve such a strong material. Perhaps if we could sequence the protein in the silk, we could make stronger materials for our own use without disturbing the spiders.
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