“Engineering researchers have crafted a flat surface that refuses to get wet. Water droplets skitter across it like ball bearings tossed on ice.
The inspiration? Not wax. Not glass. Not even Teflon.
Instead, University of Florida engineers have achieved what they label in a new paper a “nearly perfect hydrophobic interface” by reproducing, on small bits of flat plastic, the shape and patterns of the minute hairs that grow on the bodies of spiders.
“They have short hairs and longer hairs, and they vary a lot. And that is what we mimic,” said Wolfgang Sigmund, a professor of materials science and engineering.
A paper about the surface, which works equally well with hot or cold water, appears in this month’s edition of the journal Langmuir.”
Read more at Science Daily
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If hydrophobic is the same as waterproof, why isn’t arachnophobic the same as spiderproof?
Or is that a non sequitur? Probably, I’m a bit thick like that. Still seems wrong since ‘phobic’ comes from the Greek word for ‘fear’, and a surface can’t really experience fear. Or can it? They say it works using patterns of tiny hairs, but what they’re not telling us is that the material is sentient and has billions of tiny hands trying to push the water away in terror. Screaming.
I’m sorry. This is very cool isn’t it. Spiders, huh?
Water off a spiders back then.
thank you so much abeo fer not posting a picture of a spider!!!
Well spiders are amazing!