Uses of spider silk: It can be used to make items such as bulletproof vests or artificial tendons.
There is a lot of silk pulp in the spider's belly, and there are small holes at the end of its tail. When building a web, the spider sprays out the silk pulp. As soon as the silk pulp meets the air, it condenses into sticky silk. With the net formed by it, no matter what kind of flying insect it is, it will not be able to escape once it hits it. Spiders often secrete a layer of oil on their bodies and feet, and the sticky silk does not stick to oil. However, ordinary flying insects do not have this layer of oil, so spider webs can firmly stick to flying insects but not spiders.
The main chemical components of spider silk are glycine (NH2-CH2-COOH), alanine (NH2-CH[CH3]-COOH) and a small amount of serine (NH2-CH[CH2OH]-COOH ), plus other amino acid monomers to form protein molecular chains. The reason why spider silk, which is thin and soft in appearance, has excellent elasticity and strength is that: on the one hand, there are irregular protein molecular chains in spider silk, which makes spider silk elastic; on the other hand, spider silk There are also regular chains of protein molecules in it, which in turn give spider silk its strength.
Extended information:
Spider silk is known for its strong physical properties. The strength of spider silk (tension per unit cross-sectional area) is greater than high-quality steel, and is comparable to the strength of many man-made aromatic polyamide fibers, such as Tweilon fiber or Kevlar fiber. More importantly, the mass of spider silk is extremely small: the mass of spider silk that can circle the earth is still less than 500 grams.
Spider silk is also extremely malleable and can be extended to 140% of its original length without breaking. Spider silk can maintain high strength at temperatures of minus 40 degrees Celsius. The toughness of spider silk (the energy required to break per unit volume) is extremely high and comparable to that of today's commercially available man-made aromatic polyamide fibers (such as aromatic nylon), which have become the standard for modern man-made polymeric fiber technology. pronoun.
In addition, spider silk can also collect water in a directional manner, causing water to continuously condense around the nanofiber nodes, and then be transported to the periodic spindle nodes and accumulated into large water droplets.
Baidu Encyclopedia - Spider Web
Baidu Encyclopedia - Spider Silk