{"id":7567,"date":"2010-10-08T10:37:05","date_gmt":"2010-10-08T09:37:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/?p=7567"},"modified":"2010-10-08T21:15:44","modified_gmt":"2010-10-08T20:15:44","slug":"a-web-of-intrigue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/2010\/10\/08\/a-web-of-intrigue\/","title":{"rendered":"A Web of Intrigue"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got up yesterday morning at what for me is quite an early hour – 6.30ish.\u00a0 So with no CSI on the box at that time, I chose the healthy option and went for a walk in the park.\u00a0 Where I took this picture:<\/p>\n

\"spider<\/a>
Spider web with water droplets (Photo: Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That’s only kind of true.\u00a0 What I actually took was this picture:<\/p>\n

\"Spider<\/a>
Zoom out. Spider web with water droplets (Photo: Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

and only later discovered the fine structure of water droplets clinging to the spider’s thread when I got home and fired up the computer.<\/p>\n

A beautiful and fascinating sight.\u00a0 But, as per usual, the deeper beauty is in the science behind WHY droplets deposit in such regular patterns.<\/p>\n

One Google later, I’d found this relevant study described in a Nature News piece<\/a> (full research paper doi<\/abbr>:10.1038\/nature08729<\/a> behind pay-wall; also as per usual…).<\/p>\n

The News piece describes work by Lei Jiang from the Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences on the hackled orbweaver spider Uloborus walckenaerius.\u00a0 The authors found that if you get in close enough, spiders’ silk appears not as a simple thread but is covered in puffs of minute nanoscale fibres.\u00a0 When the puffs get wet they contract into tight beads or knots connected by thinner pieces of silk, necklace fashion.\u00a0 Additional water migrates and accumulates on the rough surface of the knots in preference to the smoother connecting silk, forming the uniform droplets we see.\u00a0 The research also inspired thoughts around practical offshoots, like the possibility of a man-made equivalent for the manufacture of highly water absorbent materials.<\/p>\n

I didn’t see any ‘puffs’, but I’m pretty pleased with the resolution I achieved with a good but relatively straightforward camera.\u00a0 That said, I’m feeling the need to get some of that spider silk under the microscope.<\/p>\n

Here’s one more picture taken on the same day, of a single strand of web stretching between two trees; would you believe a distance of over 20ft?<\/p>\n

\"Single<\/a>
Single filament spider silk (Photo:Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Single<\/a>
Single filament spider silk (Photo:Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The water is clearing from one portion, and the dry filament is just visible in the close-up view.\u00a0\u00a0 In the technical jargon, we can say the ratio of droplet size to silk diameter is ‘amazing’.<\/p>\n

And if you’re wondering where the spider\/s were all this time?\u00a0 Me too.\u00a0 For the arachnophiles, here’s one I took earlier.<\/p>\n

\"spider\"<\/a>
Spider (Photo:Tim Jones)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got up yesterday morning at what for me is quite an early hour – 6.30ish.\u00a0 So with no CSI on the box at that time, I chose the healthy option and went for a walk in the park.\u00a0 Where I took this picture: That’s only kind of true.\u00a0 What I actually took was this … Continue reading A Web of Intrigue<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,175,567,9],"tags":[1007,1006,1005,1004],"class_list":["post-7567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-animals","category-biology","category-experiments","category-nature","tag-doi10-1038nature08729","tag-lei-jiang","tag-silk-water-droplets","tag-spider"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkpOr-1Y3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7567"}],"version-history":[{"count":33,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7607,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7567\/revisions\/7607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/communicatescience.com\/zoonomian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}