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Better Than Gecko

Aw, come on guys. What do I have to do to get some replies? Actually be on the research team? Well, I'm not. :p
 
SkepticJ said:
Aw, come on guys. What do I have to do to get some replies?
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It helps say something stupid like “Gecko feet are proof of Intelligent Design. It’s OBVIOUS that such intricate structures could not evolve. van der Waals recanted on his death bed. It’s really God that holds molecules together.” :D

Seriously, this is really cool. A great example of evolution creating a great solution to a problem and human engineering refining it. I just hope that someday “gecko gloves” are affordable.
 
Wow!..

So.. what do u know... Spider Man movie was in the right track then they show hair growing in the hands of Peter to explain his ability to climb walls... hahaha

Just a curious fact...

How long do u think it'll be before having a Gecko - Man ?
 
In this case, science has even surpassed nature by producing bundles of nanotubes with an adhesive power 200 times greater than that of the gecko foot hairs.
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I should just point out that nature probably wasn't trying to produce gecko toes with 200 times greater stick since such geckos wouldn't actually be able to move and would just end of getting eaten.

I just thought somebody should say that.
 
SkepticJ said:
Aw, come on guys. What do I have to do to get some replies?
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Um....

There are two geckos loose in my partner's house. They eat the bugs.

Don't really have anything else to say except; that is teh n1fty. I wish that sort of thing was commercially available already.
 
espritch said:
I should just point out that nature probably wasn't trying to produce gecko toes with 200 times greater stick since such geckos wouldn't actually be able to move and would just end of getting eaten.

I just thought somebody should say that.
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I'm going to have to give you a big incorrect on this one. Natural gecko setae pop off when tilted to an angle of 30 degrees. The adhesive pops off without a force pulling againt the adhesive's strength. This is a very good thing because the practicle strength of natural gecko setae is 1-2 something kg per square cm of area. This is more than the gecko could pull off if the setae couldn't pop off. I'd imagine the same pop off trick works with these hairs as well, so even tiny weak geckos would work using this better adhesive.
The reason why geckos didn't evolve nanotube setae is that no organism on Earth can synthesize carbon nanotubes. No nanotubes, no better setae.

The above I'll have to post on a Creationist forum and ask why God coped out when making geckos. :)

Birds have better "designed" lungs than humans do. It's just that we haven't had the evolutionary pressure to evolve them, not that they wouldn't work in us.
 
Octopuses have better designed eyes than humans.

With mamals, the nerve 'wiring' that takes the signals away from the photoreceptors is on top of the photoreceptors. This is stupid, and no engineer would choose to lay it out that way without a good reason. First, it means the light has to get past the 'wiring' before it can reach the light sensitive cells. Second, there has to be a 'hole' somewhere so that all the wiring can be routed through to the brain (this is the cause of the blind spot).

Octopuses have their eyes wired up properly.
 
ceptimus said:
Octopuses have better designed eyes than humans.

With mamals, the nerve 'wiring' that takes the signals away from the photoreceptors is on top of the photoreceptors. This is stupid, and no engineer would choose to lay it out that way without a good reason. First, it means the light has to get past the 'wiring' before it can reach the light sensitive cells. Second, there has to be a 'hole' somewhere so that all the wiring can be routed through to the brain (this is the cause of the blind spot).

Octopuses have their eyes wired up properly.
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I should write a book about this kind of stuff. Here's some of what I have so far:

Suprastellar shells are far better than planets(well, they will be when we can make them)
Respirocytes will be far better than red blood cells
Mini ringworlds(made of a very plausible super strong material I don't want to go into right now) would be better than planets.
Giant synthetic smoke rings around stars(like Larry Niven thought up) would be far better than planets.

Help me add to my list......
 
stup_id said:
So.. what do u know... Spider Man movie was in the right track then they show hair growing in the hands of Peter to explain his ability to climb walls... hahaha
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I'm going to be Mr. Stickler here and explain that Peter Parker's finger hairs would, from looking at their structure in the movie, not work via this mechanism; but would instead be an interlocking adhesive. Interlocking adhesives only work on bumpy surfaces, instead of everything like gecko(anole, some skinks, some spiders and insects etc.) setae do.
 
Just thought of something, you think the nanotube setae would be self-cleaning like natural gecko setae are? This feature would be critical to the ability of this adhesive to be used over and over again.
 
SkepticJ said:
Just thought of something, you think the nanotube setae would be self-cleaning like natural gecko setae are? This feature would be critical to the ability of this adhesive to be used over and over again.
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I'm going to answer my own question:D SkepticJ, probably.


Well, I worked out the math for the strength of this adhesive:

A patch of natural gecko setae has a practical strength(because only a tenth of the total number of setae come in contact with a surface at a given time) of about 2kg for a patch the diameter of a Dime. I don't know why the Autumn Lab couldn't just put the area in square centimeters instead of Dime Areas, it'd make my life easier. Anyway, a Dime is very close to 1.8cm in diameter and you do the math to convert round areas into square. Multiplying the 2kg strength by 200 gets any mathematically savvy person the answer of 400kg.(For the metrically challenged that's about 880lb.) In short, this is a damn strong adhesive. Without doing the math I think this would easily make it possible to make a Abrams tank(with the proper gearing) that can drive up a wall(not your grandmother's wall). Why such a military machine would be needed I won't venture a guess.:p
 
Some further thoughts of mine:

Do you think in real world use, outside of the labs, that enough of the carbon nanotube setae would come in contact with the surface to equal the strength of 160kg per square centimeter of area, which is the practical strength of this patch under lab conditions?
 
SkepticJ said:
Some further thoughts of mine:

Do you think in real world use, outside of the labs, that enough of the carbon nanotube setae would come in contact with the surface to equal the strength of 160kg per square centimeter of area, which is the practical strength of this patch under lab conditions?
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Even it this was possible in the real world, I don’t think it would matter. The material holding the setae would fail long before that. The palm of my hand is roughly 81 square cm. 81*160 = 12,960 kg. I don’t think it’s possible to make a glove that could support more that 14 tons.
 
Ohmer said:
I don’t think it’s possible to make a glove that could support more that 14 tons.
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Nice math, but I do. The same carbon nanotubes that the setae are made from are 70X stronger than steel per weight. Make it out of carbon nanotube fabric:) I wasn't thinking this in regard to climbing gloves anyway. Anyone obese enough to tear their gloves wouldn't be able to climb in the first place. I was thinking more along the lines of lifting cargo, automobile tires for ice etc.
 
I see your point. I’m sure it would be possible to engineer a fantastically strong fastener. At some point you still have to deal with substrate failure. Suppose a made a crane that had a 20 x 20 cm setae fastener on it. I could theoretically lift an M1A2 Abrams main battle tank(63,200 Kg) with this. The question is, would I end up lifting the tank or would I just end up ripping an 20 x 20 cm hunk of armor out of the turret. My point is that setae may actually be too strong to be practical. This is really a good thing because it may make is ultimately easier to create something affordable. It doesn’t have to be full strength to be very useful.

My idea for a crane would look something like an inverted umbrella that could open flat. I’m thinking ship containers here. You could move the cone shaped fastener to the container, “open” it flat so the setae could grab the container. To release, you would “close” the umbrella, peeling the fastener off from the outside in. If the ribs of the umbrella were flexible enough one could even grab non-flat surfaces with this.

Oh the potential.
 
Ohmer said:
I see your point. I’m sure it would be possible to engineer a fantastically strong fastener. At some point you still have to deal with substrate failure. Suppose a made a crane that had a 20 x 20 cm setae fastener on it. I could theoretically lift an M1A2 Abrams main battle tank(63,200 Kg) with this. The question is, would I end up lifting the tank or would I just end up ripping an 20 x 20 cm hunk of armor out of the turret. My point is that setae may actually be too strong to be practical. This is really a good thing because it may make is ultimately easier to create something affordable. It doesn’t have to be full strength to be very useful.

My idea for a crane would look something like an inverted umbrella that could open flat. I’m thinking ship containers here. You could move the cone shaped fastener to the container, “open” it flat so the setae could grab the container. To release, you would “close” the umbrella, peeling the fastener off from the outside in. If the ribs of the umbrella were flexible enough one could even grab non-flat surfaces with this.

Oh the potential.
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I see your point now, however, for climbing glove applications a palm covered wouldn't be needed. Each finger tip could have say 2.5-3cm^2 of setae, this would give a huge safety margin for climbing. One could leap, fall and grab ahold of the building, rock, whatever again without going beyond the bonding strength. Catch is a human probably shouldn't do that, they'd break their arms and legs. Machines, and eventually cyborg humans could make use of jumping off, letting go etc.

Good idea.
 
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