Taken for a Spin
Scientists look to spiders for the goods on silk
To illustrate the amazing properties of spider silk, Nikola Kojic offers an arresting example. Imagine a circular web with a diameter of 100 meters—about the length of a football field—spun from a silk thread about a centimeter thick. Concentric circles 4 cm apart attach to the web’s spokes, also 4 cm apart. This larger-than-life web “could stop a jumbo jet in midflight,” says Kojic.
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Impressive—as would be the jumbo spider that one could imagine crawling over to the jet. But beyond the monster-movie possibilities, the scenario demonstrates what scientists covet most about spider silk: its exceptional capacity to absorb kinetic energy. Scientists would like to exploit that property in items ranging from bulletproof vests to suspension cables for bridges.