How do geckos stick to surfaces? A. The toes of geckos are - TopicsExpress



          

How do geckos stick to surfaces? A. The toes of geckos are covered in ridge-like lamellae, producing a tyre tread pattern. B. Millions of microscopic hairs, or setae, cover each toe. These are only as long as two diameters of a human hair. C. Each seta ends in up to 1000 even tinier tips, called spatulae D. The spatular tips are only 200 billionths of a metre wide -below the wavelength of visible light These tiny spatulae stick to walls and other surfaces by van der Waals forces, an electrostatic attraction or repulsion between materials caused by the uneven distribution of the charge on their molecules. These allow geckos to cling to almost any surface without secreting a sticky substance.
Posted on: Wed, 05 Mar 2014 06:15:28 +0000

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