A very elegant mechanism

Quote from another forum:

#9 Post by MichaelG. » Sat Mar 21, 2020 9:55 am

MicroBob wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 21, 2020 8:46 am

Here is an interesting explanation for the function of the droplets: They keep the net taught: **LINK**

Many thanks for that link, Bob

The video from Oxford is astonishing

MichaelG.

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The subject is Spider web
... Some here may be interested in the mechanism, and the fact that it has been successfully re-created.

MichaelG.

Michael

I must admit that I had never considered why I had not seen a slack spider' web. I expect like many others I had just thought that the silk had enough stretch built in to accommodate movement. This is a brilliant and as you say quite astonishing revelation. Thanks for posting it and I shall definitely look at this type of spider's web in a new light from now on.

Martin

Cool.
It made me think a little. Presumably related to thing like menisci in fluids and the whole science of boundary layers?

Isn't nature wonderful ?  and we think  we are clever 

Edited By roy entwistle on 21/03/2020 10:56:14

Presumably the need for thread-tensioning droplets only applies to outdoor webs, with things like wind and insect movement to compensate for. Indoor spider webs don't seem to have such droplets, as they mostly operate in still air. A very interesting video; I assume the silk is attracted to the surface of the droplet by surface tension. Does the spider produce the droplets, I wonder, or just wait for a spot of rain? Probably the former if the principle is observed in arid areas.

We are not clever, it has all been done before, it,s just that it,s taking us a bit longer to see it.

Mother Nature has been around for a long time, without our "Help", why don't we just leave her to get on with it ? Spiders webs are the most amazing things I have ever seen, they are well worth looking at.

Just look at them and study them, you will learn a lot, believe me.

who else remembers...
as a kid on the way to school on misty mornings we used to picka length of privet, bend it into a hoop and collect the spider webs across it. In the mist they were as to see on the hedges. Collect enough and one had a miniature tennis racket to bat pebbles with..

Ah, spidey's had about 300 MY to develop this. Neat as it indeed is.

But the droplets on spider webs evaporate later in the morning and the webs still work...

Neil

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MicroBob states:

My spider web is photographed as taken from outside the house, not too early in the morning, so the droplets shouldn't be dew.

... So I am currently uninformed as to what they are.

MichaelG.

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Edit: In case you missed it ... The explanatory text on Youtube states:

Why doesn't a spider's web sag in the wind or catapult flies back out like a trampoline? The answer, according to new research by an international team of scientists, lies in the physics behind a 'hybrid' material produced by spiders for their webs. Pulling on a sticky thread in a garden spider's orb web and letting it snap back reveals that the thread never sags but always stays taut – even when stretched many times its original length. This is because any loose thread is immediately spooled inside the thousands of tiny droplets of watery glue that coat and surround the core gossamer fibres of the web's capture spiral. The researchers studied the details of this 'liquid thread' technique in spiders' webs and were able to recreate it in the laboratory using oil droplets on a plastic filament. These composite fibres, just like the spider's capture silk, extend like a solid and compress like a liquid.

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... and here is the source: http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2016-05-16-scientists-create-novel-liquid-wire-material-inspired-spiders-capture-silk

Link to paper is at the end of that page ^^^

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 21/03/2020 19:17:54