Photo: ‘Dew on spiders web – Cullompton, Devon – Oct 2019’ by Dis

SPIDER'S SILK

Innovative strength and flexibility

Spider’s – Araneae – silk is both light and flexible, and on a molecular scale, is five times stronger than steel. The silk is made at room temperature with nature’s raw materials of water and dead flies spun out of a spider’s rear chamber. It inspires scientists to find ways of producing such an innovative strong material through many different innovative ways, from growing bacteria to engineered machinery. The ancient Greeks are known to have applied sheets of spider web onto open wounds, where the antiseptic properties would prevent infection and encourage healing.

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