Here are some articles a friend sent to me recently (thanks Katie!).
I posted earlier about piezoelectricity being used in dance clubs and subway turnstiles, but here is an article about a smaller version that could be used in cell phones.
The second article is about gecko tape. Geckos have a really fascinating ability to climb on the pads of their feet using Van der Waals interactions between the tiny setae (each with a diameter of 5 micrometers) on the pads of the toes and the surface of the thing it is sticking to. The article says that tape and adhesive technology being developed now that imitates the gecko’s abilities may be available on the market in 3-5 years!
The gecko tape article was very interesting because of the discussion of all of the various types of tape–I never thought about there being so many different ones! It didn’t have much to say about gecko tape at all, really, but I did particularly like this sentence:
“The tape, which is reusable, was so strong, Mr. Autumn said, that when they tested it, he was able to stick his 50-pound, 8-year-old daughter to a window with it.”
Hahahaha 🙂