An irresistible attraction to gecko feet is an occupational hazard for engineers who study how one thing sticks to another. Geckos can climb just about anything, including glass, and in 2002 scientists identified the force of molecular attraction that bonds dry gecko foot pads to a surface.
Engineers copied nature’s invention with synthetic gecko-inspired materials, but the artificial materials didn’t work well with heavy loads like the roughly 150-pound body weight of Elliot W. Hawkes, a Stanford graduate student in mechanical engineering.
Image: Humans climb glass with a rig that uses gecko-inspired adhesive pads. Video by David Frank on Publish Date November 24, 2014.
