November 14, 2000

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  Kinda makes Spiderman jealous…

  
  

  After decades of speculation, scientists have finally figured out how Gecko’s defy gravity to walk on walls and ceilings; and the answer is so fascinating I just felt compelled to blog. Turns out its not any sort of suction, as intuition would presume, but a weak force called the van der Waals force. Now if I remember my chemistry, the van der Waals force is a very weak force, far weaker than gravity, electric and magnetic forces, and any other chemical forces in existence. It is so weak it is only powerful at small magnitudes over small distances. In fact we experience van der Waals forces in everything we touch, yet it is too small to register with our senses. Which means A) the gecko’s feet must have microscopic hairs at the atomic scale, yet B) there are enough of these hairs to carry an animal thousands of orders of magnitude heavier. Since van der Waals forces are molecule-to-molecule interactions (independent of chemical composition), the gecko could walk across any solid surface. The van der Waals forces are feeble; imagine discovering their powerful possibilities in something as simple as a gecko’s walk. How cunning evolution must be to discern then exploit this afterthought of forces; such minute details remind us just how awesome yet sublime Nature is. (Another article on the subject can be found here)

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