Researchers at University of Cambridge had some fighting words last week when they announced Spider-Man’s climbing abilities were scientifically impossible — a headline that even caught late-night television talk show host Stephen Colbert’s attention. Now, researchers at Stanford University are rebutting those claims with their own findings.
Stanford researcher Elliot Hawkes has brought back the Gecko Glove, which he debuted in 2014, in response to Colbert to make the case that Spider-Man could, in theory, scale a wall. It may not be as effortless and graceful as seen in movies but it is possible.
“Here at Stanford, we have an issue with that,” says Hawkes in a YouTube video. “Because, if you don’t just copy the gecko, but instead you are clever about how you distribute your weight, you can use a device like [the Gecko Glove] and a human can climb a glass wall.”
The Gecko Glove has 24 adhesive tiles covered with sawtooth-shape polymer structures that measure 100 micrometers in length.
"When the pad first touches the surface, only the tips touch, so it's not sticky," said co-author Eric Eason, a graduate student in applied physics, in a statement when the Gecko Glove was first introduced. "But when the load is applied, and the wedges turn over and come into contact with the surface, that creates the adhesion force."
According to Hawkes, a mechanical engineering graduate student who created the Gecko Glove as part of his dissertation work, the current prototype of the glove can carry 200 pounds and it has the potential to support 2,000 pounds if increased in size.
Cambridge researchers; however, announced last week that a gecko would be the largest creature to have the ability to climb walls. In Spider-Man’s case, there is no way for stickiness in his hands and feet to carry his weight.
“If a human, for example, wanted to walk up a wall the way a gecko does, we’d need impractically large sticky feet — our shoes would need to be a European size 145 or a U.S. size 114,” said Walter Federle, a member of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and the senior author of the paper, in a statement.
Dr. David Labonte, lead author of the study and also a member of Cambridge’s Department of Zoology, explained that it boils down to the body surface area and volume.
“As animals increase in size, the amount of body surface area per volume decreases – an ant has a lot of surface area and very little volume, and an elephant is mostly volume with not much surface area,” said Labonte in a statement. “This poses a problem for larger climbing animals because, when they are bigger and heavier, they need more sticking power, but they have comparatively less body surface available for sticky footpads. This implies that there is a maximum size for animals climbing with sticky footpads – and that turns out to be about the size of a gecko.”
The study was covered by Colbert in a segment on his CBS show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, where he discussed how science has destroyed Spider-Man.
