Water striders, as we learned in class, work with water's properties to stay afloat and actually repel water from their legs. Water's surface tension property and the insect's super-hydrophobia helped professor of Chemistry at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Xiao Cheng Zeng who worked together with colleagues -- and the supercomputer -- at Japan's RIKEN Institute, Takahiro Koishi, Shigenori Fujikawa, and Toshikazu Ebisuzaki and Kenji Yasuoka of Keio University, to develop the idea that a specific arrangement of pillars keeps water molecules from entering between them. This capability is what makes things like the water striders legs super-hydrophobic. This is the same technology found on flower petals; when you watch a droplet of water bead up and roll off. The hope is that this research will allow for self-cleaning walls, counters, and fabrics, and robots could literally walk on water. For these reasons this research is so important for human evolution and development. The photo depicts a water droplet incapable of entering between pillars.
This article and discovery is a form of discovery science because the researchers used their observations of the way water striders and other super-hydrophobic organisms are technologically built to form a conclusion.
Author: Val Wang
Title of Article: Robots Borrow Hydro-Repelling Tech from Insect Legs to Walk on Water
Journal: Popular Science
Date Published: 6/2/2009
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