YOU won’t be able to swing between buildings on strands of spider silk any time soon, but an unexpected discovery has just opened a whole new range of applications for this super-tough material: it contracts and lengthens with changes in humidity, doing 50 times the work of human muscle for a given mass.
Spider silk’s tensile strength has already marked it out as a possible component in bulletproof vests and medical sutures. Now it could also play an active role in devices ranging from micro drug-delivery systems to green energy production.
of the University of Akron…
