{"id":17949,"date":"2014-08-12T20:03:33","date_gmt":"2014-08-13T00:03:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=17949"},"modified":"2014-08-12T20:08:43","modified_gmt":"2014-08-13T00:08:43","slug":"geckos-control-toe-hairs-to-be-sticky-or-not-inspiring-bioengineers-to-do-the-same","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2014\/08\/12\/geckos-control-toe-hairs-to-be-sticky-or-not-inspiring-bioengineers-to-do-the-same\/","title":{"rendered":"Geckos control toe hairs to be sticky or not, inspiring bioengineers to do the same"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sunday, as we were driving in the car, my granddaughter asked me how it was possible for a bee to cling to the front passenger window despite the breeze of the car moving through the air.\u00a0 I said something vaguely like “Tufts of microscopic hairs …”<\/p>\n

Coincidentally, today I found an\u00a0 article on Tech Times<\/em> Geckos control toe hairs to be sticky or not, inspiring bioengineers to do the same<\/a>.\u00a0 Explaining how the geckos hang on, they gave a more complete sentence than I was able to remember.<\/p>\n

Those tufts of microscopic hairs can conform so closely to the surface contours of a surface that an effect known as the van der Waals force can operate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was also trying to imagine how the grip could be released.\u00a0 Of course, the headline of the article indicates that the explanation for that is also in the article.<\/p>\n

Engineers study the most fascinating stuff.\u00a0 The next time you sneer at a government (or other source) funded study of\u00a0 bugs as a waste of time, try to open your mind to the reasons for such studies.\u00a0 Maybe you can’t\u00a0 imagine the reason, but that does not mean that there isn’t a reason.<\/p>\n

Sneering is an easy reaction, but it is not likely to be the most intelligent one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sunday, as we were driving in the car, my granddaughter asked me how it was possible for a bee to cling to the front passenger window despite the breeze of the car moving through the air.\u00a0 I said something vaguely like “Tufts of microscopic hairs …” Coincidentally, today I found an\u00a0 article on Tech Times […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17949","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17949"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17952,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17949\/revisions\/17952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}