If anybody asks you, what is the most attractive ability of Spiderman as a superhero, the obvious answer would be, crawling on the wall without even falling.It is breathtakingly amazing to see him crawling up in the walls to fight the enemy.
Watching movies on spiderman and crawling like him on the wall is a common fantasy for many. According to the fiction, Spiderman has adhesive nets coming out of his body after getting infected by a special type of spider. The net is so strong that he can easily climb up and down along the walls.Many animals can crawl on the wall. But what is the reason behind this? Can you also crawl on the wall? Let’s find out.
There lies solid science behind the ability to crawl on the wall. The animals endowed with this feature have one significant thing in common. Their legs are not like normal human legs. There are adhesive pads on their legs, which extend some hair-like projections, that in turn adhere to the wall by creating molecular force. This force is known as the Van der Waals force.Simply, this is one type of magnetic force. The movement of the electron inside an atom creates positive and negative poles. The side where more electron is accumulated is known as the negative pole, whereas the pole with fewer electrons is called the positive side. The positive side gets attracted to the negative pole and vice versa. This peculiar and brilliant trick is adopted by many animals as their survival strategy. Geckos are the largest known animal with the ability to crawl.
Various research has been conducted to find this answer. Scientists have found out that, there is some sort of size restrictions for crawling. There is a specific ratio to be maintained between the foot and body size. Crawling is possible when at least 40 percent of the body contains adhesives.Whereas, geckos need only 4.3% of their surface area to be covered by adhesives. The body surface area to volume ratio is also important as small animals need fewer adhesives than big animals.
Proper research with technological innovation can turn fiction into reality. But, always remember the difference between glue and footpads, the first one is sticky but not the second one. So, do not ever try to become spiderman or Ethan hunt trick shown in Mission Impossible series. Scientists are trying hard to discover something like a gecko footpad for humans. As yesterday’s fiction is today’s reality, you can definitely have some faith in science and scientists.
Maybe, one fine day all your dreams of climbing the wall like Spiderman will come true.
