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Scientists Explain Gecko Stickiness

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Anonymous

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Cant wait to see these Gecko robots :)

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/nation/3946583.htm

PORTLAND, Ore. - The mystery of what makes geckos stick to just about anything - a question that has puzzled scientific minds since Aristotle - finally has been solved, according to a new study.

"I just saw the movie 'Spiderman' and I realized that some day we'll be able to do even better than he does sticking to things," said Kellar Autumn, a Lewis & Clark College biologist in Portland and lead author of the study published Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Researchers found that the tips of the hairs on the bottom of gecko feet are tiny enough to take advantage of a weak attraction between individual molecules called van der Waals forces.

Geckos have millions of microscopic hairs on the bottoms of their feet that are narrower than human hairs, and each splits off into 1,000 tips that are so small they cannot be seen with a conventional microscope and can be detected only with an electron microscope.

The shape of the hairtips also is critical, allowing the small lizard to scamper up walls and across ceilings by sticking its toes to nearly any smooth surface in less than one eight-thousandth of a second and unsticking them in half that time.

"What we discovered was the angle the little shaft of the hair makes with the surface is the critical variable," Autumn said.

"The gecko has this really unique way of taking its feet off the wall - it peels its toes like tape," he said. "When that angle reaches 30 degrees, the hair pops off."

Aristotle noted the climbing abilities of geckos in the fourth century B.C. and scientists have been actively trying to solve the mystery for roughly the past century, ever since Dutch physicist Johann van der Waals won the Nobel Prize in physics 1910 for his research on the gaseous and liquid states of matter, Autumn said.

Earlier studies of gecko feet had reduced the explanation to either the capillary effect of tiny amounts of water that create suction or something that worked whether there was any water or not, in this case, the van der Waals attraction between molecules.

Autumn and a team of researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and Stanford University fabricated a synthetic version of the gecko hairs and tried them on two different kinds of highly polished, extremely smooth semiconductor chip materials.

Both chips allow van der Waals forces to work, but a silicon-based chip also allows the capillary action of water to work while a gallium arsenide chip prevents any effect by water.

The synthetic hairs stuck to both chips, just like real gecko feet, Autumn said.

"I think the experimental evidence they provided is the definitive test - I think they've really nailed it with this one," said Bill Kier, a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill biologist who studies the way octopuses stick to surfaces.

The study also is a valuable tool for developing synthetic materials, he said.

"Often it's not the best strategy to copy Nature piece by piece, but rather to extract the basic principles," Kier said.

"And this is a lovely example."
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I suspect that they'll make some really marketable product from this knowledge...maybe velcro for Barbie dolls?
 
If gloves and such were made, would the weight of human be too much for it? I mean, the lightweightedness of a gecko has got it contribute heavily (pun not intended) to how it works. A 175 lb person is something altogether different; in fact, wouldn't the paint and wallpaper just rip off in great pieces?
 
If the gloves had to hold the weight of most humans then they would need to be the size that would fit those big pointing hand things you see people wearing at the WWF wrestling matches.
However its worth considering that suits made of velcro are around that let u run and bounce on a trampoline then stick to a velcro wall. Im pretty sure its possible to do this if this technology is stronger that velcro, maybe just not in gloves but a whole body suit?

About the paint and wallpaper ripping, well that seems plausable and perhaps its something they should warn potential wall crawlers about ;)
 
I'll have to wait for the Extra-Strength gloves to come out, as I am what we Yanks call a "lard-ass." Heck, why not just gene-splice us a real Spider-Man? Restructure his bones so he'd be lighter weight but more durable, then use the "gecko finger gene" to fix his hands and feet? Maybe treat his salivary glands w/ that spider silk gene (like they did w/ goat's milk) so he could spit webs?

I think I missed my calling as a mad scientist, mate. :eek!!!!:
 
Good Idea Torgos, only why would you go to all the bother of adding Gecko DNA if youve already fired in Spider DNA?
Youll end up with some sort of mammal/arachnid/reptile creature thingy that should belong in Turok. :p

The spider silk thing has already been done, but unfortunately to a goat.
 
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