Published in the United States of America by Cherry Lake Publishing Ann Arbor Michigan www cherrylakepublishing com Content Adviser Marjan Eggermont Senior Instructor Schulich School of Engineering Calgary Alberta Canada Reading Adviser Marla Conn ReadAbility Inc Design The Design Lab Photo Credits Cover background page 3 background and page 19 Image courtesy of Duncan Irschick and Alfred Crosby at the University of Massachusetts Amherst cover left Image courtesy of Duncan Irschick at the University of Massachusetts Amherst cover right and page 3 Image courtesy of Michael Bartlett and Dan King Crosby Research Group University of Massachusetts Amherst page 4 Erkki Alvenmod Shutterstock com page 6 gresei Shutterstock Inc page 7 Sinisa Botas Shutterstock Inc page 9 infografick Shutterstock Inc page 10 Cathy Keifer Shutterstock Inc page 13 DDCoral Shutterstock Inc page 14 AlessandroZocc Shutterstock Inc page 15 Image courtesy of Michael Bartlett and Dan King Crosby Research Group University of Massachusetts Amherst page 17 Georgios Kollidas Dreamstime com page 19 Image courtesy of Duncan Irschick and Alfred Crosby at the University of Massachusetts Amherst page 20 Blend Images Shutterstock Inc page 21 Aspen Photo Shutterstock Inc page 23 Greg Epperson Shutterstock Inc page 25 Natali Glado Shutterstock Inc page 27 AP photo Scanpix Sweden Henrik Montgomery Copyright 2014 by Cherry Lake Publishing All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mara Wil From gecko feet to adhesive tape by Wil Mara pages cm Innovations From Nature Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 978-1-62431-752-1 lib bdg ISBN 978-1-62431-764-4 pdf ISBN 978-1-62431-758-3 pbk ISBN 978-1-62431-770-5 e-book 1 Adhesives Juvenile literature 2 Adhesive tape Juvenile literature 3 Geckos Anatomy Juvenile literature 4 Biomimicry Juvenile literature 5 Inventions Juvenile literature I Title TP968 M28 2014 668 3 dc23 Cherry Lake Publishing would like to acknowledge the work of The Partnership for 21st Century Skills Please visit www p21 org for more information Printed in the United States of America Corporate Graphics Inc January 2014 2013030375
Chapter One A Sticky Situation Chapter Two The Missing Link Chapter Three The Bigger Picture Chapter Four Today and Tomorrow Chapter Five Minds at Work Glossary For More Information Index About the Author 4 9 14 20 25 30 31 32 32 INNOVATIONS FROM NATURE
4 Imagine you are sitting on the couch watching your favorite TV show Suddenly a fly zooms past your face It heads for the ceiling turns itself upside down and sticks there You lose interest in the TV as you watch this amazing animal crawl across your ceiling You wonder what it would be like to stick to surfaces like the fly can You’re just a human being though CHAPTER ONE Have you ever wondered how a fly can stick to almost any surface From Gecko Feet to Adhesive Tape
A Sticky Situation 5 You can’t climb up walls or hang from ceilings Or can you An adhesive is a substance that enables one thing to stick to another The sticky stuff on a piece of tape is an adhesive So is the stuff that keeps a Band-Aid on your skin Glue and paste are adhesives So are cement and beeswax Humans have been using adhesives for thousands of years The earliest known man-made adhesive was made from tar It was used to hold two stones together Evidence of this ancient adhesive was discovered in Italy in 2001 It is believed to be more than 200,000 years old Sticky substances for repairing pottery were first used around 4000 BCE Simple cements for making art and decorations were used thousands of years ago in ancient Babylonia Glue plants were grown in Holland in the late 1600s In 1750 England issued the first patent for glue The glue was made from dead fish It may sound gross but it worked Glues and other adhesives were widely used in America by the early 1800s In 1848 an inventor named Henry Day patented early forms of tape in the United States Other adhesives such as the pressure-sensitive tape we use today were developed in the early 1900s Today adhesives are classified into two basic kinds reactive and nonreactive Reactive adhesives are INNOVATIONS FROM NATURE
