From the article: This gives me geeky joy - I love it when there are examples of biology taking advantage of physics at both large and small scales.
From the article:
In 2012, Víctor Ortega-Jiménez(opens a new tab) stumbled into electrostatics while playing with his 4-year-old daughter. They were using a toy wand that gathers static charge to levitate lightweight objects, such as a balloon. When they decided to test it outside, he made a startling observation.
All matter — wands, balloons, webs, air — strives for balance between its positive and negative particles (protons, electrons and ions). At an unfathomably small scale, Ortega-Jiménez’s toy buzzes with an imbalance: A motor draws negative charges inward, forcing positive charges to the wand’s surface. This is static. It’s like when you rub a balloon against your head. Friction sheds electrons from your hair to the rubber, loading it up with static charge, so that when you lift the balloon, strands of hair float with it.
In a similar way, Ortega-Jiménez considered, friction from beating insect wings could shed negative charges from body to air, leaving the insects with a positive charge while creating regions of negative static. He realized that if a web carries negative charge and insects a positive one, then a spiderweb might not just be a passive trap — it could move toward and attract its quarry electrostatically. His lab experiments revealed precisely that. Webs deformed instantly(opens a new tab) when jolted with static from flies, aphids, honeybees and even water droplets. Spiders caught charged insects more easily. He saw how static electricity altered the physics of animal interactions.
The magic of animal electrostatics is all about size. Large animals don’t meaningfully experience nature’s static — we’re too big to feel it. “As humans, we are living mostly in a gravitational or fluid-dynamics world,” Ortega-Jiménez said. But for tiny beings, gravity is an afterthought. Insects can feel air’s viscosity. While the same laws of physics reign over Earth’s smallest and largest species, the balance of forces shifts with size. Intermolecular forces flex beneath the feet of water striders on a pond, capillary forces shoot water impossibly upward through a plant’s thin roots, and electrostatic forces can ensnare any oppositely charged flecks that lie in their path.
This gives me geeky joy - I love it when there are examples of biology taking advantage of physics at both large and small scales.
From the article:
This gives me geeky joy - I love it when there are examples of biology taking advantage of physics at both large and small scales.