When testing the capture spiral of an orb weaver's web, the scientists from the University of Oxford and Pierre and Marie Curie University found that the silk was quite stretchy, which wasn't surprising. But when they slackened the thread, they found that the silk failed to sag in the middle. It just kept adapting to the new length, remaining taut, as if it was shrinking. By coating a plastic filament with tiny droplets of oil, the researchers were able to create a "liquid wire" that exhibited the same behavior — confirming their hypothesis that it was the interaction between the silk fiber's elasticity and the surface tension of the glue droplets that covered it that made this strange material possible. In other words, novel material acts as both a solid and a liquid, which is as nuts as it sounds. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...dible-liquid-wire-is-inspired-by-spider-silk/
What startled me was the discovery that they could duplicate the behavior with all kinds of materials - almost any fiber and liquid combination. What else have we overlo0ked, in this world?
