Spider silk

BBC DOCUMENTARY | The Strongest Materials In The World Documentary Science Films Full Lengths

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BBC DOCUMENTARY Military 2015 | The Strongest Materials In The World Documentary Science Films Full Lengths -------------------------------- It’s as strong as steel and tough as a bulletproof vest, capable of withstanding the same amount of pressure it takes to turn carbon into a diamond. Scientists have discovered nature’s newest strongest material, and it comes from … a sea snail. All hail the mighty mollusk. In a study set to come out this month in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface, British researchers announced that the teeth of shelled, aquatic creatures called limpets are the strongest biological material on Earth, overtaking the previous record-holder, spider silk. The teeth, which are so small they must be examined with a microscope, are composed of very thin, tightly-packed fibers containing a hard mineral called goethite. Limpets use them to scrape food off of rocks, but lead author Asa Barber said humans can adapt the technology to build better planes, boats and dental fillings. Barber, a professor at the University of Portsmouth in the United Kingdom, tested the tooth fibers for tensile strength — the amount of force they can withstand without breaking — by attaching each end of a very small shaving to a lever and pulling on the sample with an atomic force microscope. He found that the material had a strength of 5 gigapascals, about five times the strength of most spider silks. “People are always trying to find the next strongest thing, but spider silk has been the winner for quite a few years now,” Barber told the BBC. “So we were quite happy that the limpet teeth exceeded that.” The teeth also bested several man-made materials, including Kevlar, a synthetic fiber used to make bulletproof vests and puncture-proof tires. The amount of weight it can withstand, Barber told the BBC, can be compared to a strand of spaghetti used to hold up more than 3,300 pounds, the weight of an adult female hippopotamus. Their secret is in the size of their fibers, which are 1/100th the diameter of a human hair. The ultra-thin filaments avoid the holes and defects that plague larger strands — including man-made carbon fibers — meaning any structure they compose is also flawless, regardless of how big it gets. BBC DOCUMENTARY 2015 | The Strongest Materials In The World Documentary Science Films Full Lengths More information : https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/18/scientists-have-discovered-natures-newest-strongest-material-and-it-comes-from-a-sea-snail/