Spider Silk

Download or read book Spider Silk written by Leslie Brunetta and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-08 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spiders, objects of eternal human fascination, are found in many places: on the ground, in the air, and even under water. Leslie Brunetta and Catherine Craig have teamed up to produce a substantive yet entertaining book for anyone who has ever wondered, as a spider rappelled out of reach on a line of silk, “How do they do that?” The orb web, that iconic wheel-shaped web most of us associate with spiders, contains at least four different silk proteins, each performing a different function and all meshing together to create a fly-catching machine that has amazed and inspired humans through the ages. Brunetta and Craig tell the intriguing story of how spiders evolved over 400 million years to add new silks and new uses for silk to their survival “toolkit” and, in the telling, take readers far beyond the orb. The authors describe the trials and triumphs of spiders as they use silk to negotiate an ever-changing environment, and they show how natural selection acts at the genetic level and as individuals struggle for survival.

Download or read book Stronger Than Steel written by Bridget Heos and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2013 with total page 85 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An introduction to the field of genetics through the story of Randy Lewis and his work with golden orb weaver spiders and his subsequent creation of artificial spider silk that can be used to save and improve lives. Full color.

Download or read book Golden Spider Silk written by Simon Peers and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Silk & Venom written by Kathryn Lasky and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follows the firsthand search of arachnologist Greta Binford for the elusive Loxosceles, the deadly recluse spider.

Download or read book Spider Webs written by William Eberhard and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-12-22 with total page 679 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this lavishly illustrated, first-ever book on how spider webs are built, function, and evolved, William Eberhard provides a comprehensive overview of spider functional morphology and behavior related to web building, and of the surprising physical agility and mental abilities of orb weavers. For instance, one spider spins more than three precisely spaced, morphologically complex spiral attachments per second for up to fifteen minutes at a time. Spiders even adjust the mechanical properties of their famously strong silken lines to different parts of their webs and different environments, and make dramatic modifications in orb designs to adapt to available spaces. This extensive adaptive flexibility, involving decisions influenced by up to sixteen different cues, is unexpected in such small, supposedly simple animals. As Eberhard reveals, the extraordinary diversity of webs includes ingenious solutions to gain access to prey in esoteric habitats, from blazing hot and shifting sand dunes (to capture ants) to the surfaces of tropical lakes (to capture water striders). Some webs are nets that are cast onto prey, while others form baskets into which the spider flicks prey. Some aerial webs are tramways used by spiders searching for chemical cues from their prey below, while others feature landing sites for flying insects and spiders where the spider then stalks its prey. In some webs, long trip lines are delicately sustained just above the ground by tiny rigid silk poles. Stemming from the author’s more than five decades observing spider webs, this book will be the definitive reference for years to come.

Download or read book A Spider’s Web written by Peter N. Witt and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 114 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Gradually, a faint brightness appeared in the east, and the air, which had been very warm through the night, felt cool and chilly. Though there was no daylight yet, the darkness was diminished, and the stars looked pale. The prison, which had been a mere black mass with little shape or form, put on its usual aspect; and ever and anon a solitary watchman could be seen upon its roof, stopping to look down upon the preparations in the street . . . By and by the feeble light grew stronger, and the houses with their sign-boards and inscriptions stood plainly out, in the dull grey morning . . . And now, the sun's first beams came glancing into the street; and the night's work, which, in its various stages and in the varied fancies of the lookers-on had taken a hundred shapes, wore its own proper form - a scaffold and a gibbet . . . " (The Complete Works of Charles Dickens, Harper & Brothers, New York and London, Barnaby Rudge, Vol. II, Chapter XIX, page 164. ) Dickens describes an activity which takes place in the early morning hours, just before sunrise. As the day begins and people start to go about their business and get ready to watch the hanging, the hangman is ready with the gallows.

Download or read book Metal, Ceramic and Polymeric Composites for Various Uses written by John Cuppoletti and published by BoD – Books on Demand. This book was released on 2011-07-20 with total page 702 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Composite materials, often shortened to composites, are engineered or naturally occurring materials made from two or more constituent materials with significantly different physical or chemical properties which remain separate and distinct at the macroscopic or microscopic scale within the finished structure. The aim of this book is to provide comprehensive reference and text on composite materials and structures. This book will cover aspects of design, production, manufacturing, exploitation and maintenance of composite materials. The scope of the book covers scientific, technological and practical concepts concerning research, development and realization of composites.