Gecko Essay

Have you ever imagined climbing on the roof? Have you ever imagined walking straight up a wall? Well if you have your dream may not be so far away with the new technology that was discovered by Gecko’s. The new technology really isn’t all that new, it was just recently discover by the human race, so therefore we consider it new, but really it has been around for millions of years. The secret to the gecko's ability to climb walls is really complex, it starts down at the molecular level, with what they call a spatula it is a nanohair that is roughly 200 nanometers wide, and tall (Robert Full 2000). The spatula is so small you cannot see it with the naked eye, but it creates a relatively strong force for it size, and that’s what keeps it climbing on the wall, and ceilings. The force that is created is a reality weak force, but because this force is so small a Gecko’s foot has hundreds of millions of these spatulas, and because of the millions of these hairs it creates a force equal too 4x107 μn which is roughly 40N per foot (Robert Full 2000). Given that seems like a minuscule amount but that is per foot that is only 100mm2 (Robert Full 2000). Think about if that only for a 100mm2 and a human foot that’s roughly 10000 mm2 that’s hundred times the force per foot that a gecko foot, so you would be producing 4000N per foot (Robert Full 2000).

What the reason behind the “stickiness” of a gecko’s foot? According to Robert Full who has his degree in gecko feet, and cockroach legs it is created by the Vander Der Waal effect, it may only be .4 μn per hair (Robert Full 2000), but if you look closer there are roughly hundreds of millions of these nanohairs and give there is so many it quickly adds up to a very strong force (Robert Full 200...

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...hairs is astounding, there are just so many application that these could be used in, like from simple hanger, clear to extreme burn victims to cover the wound. The potential for nanohairs though won’t stop to simple thing like that because it could eventually reach the aircraft technology, andor could even be used in the military for covert missions. The technology would never have been discovered if it weren’t for the geckos and Robert Full. Because of those two it may have never been discovered, and now it will help be a huge improvement to human life. Like said before sooner than later the human species may just be able to climb walls and walking on the roof trying to be like Spiderman. As stated before on major thing that the technology could be used for is firefighting robots, andor Paramedic robots to rescue people from place that a human could not get to