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Press Release
05-171
For These Bugs,
Walking on Water Is Easy
Getting out of the pond is the problem
September 28, 2005
A "meniscus"—the crescent-shaped and barely visible slope
literally at water's edge—can mean life or death to an insect
the size of a speck of dust. Water bugs that tiny must summon
the energy to "surf" themselves up the problematic interface
between liquid and solid in ponds and other wet places to
escape predators or reproduce.
Menisci are all around us, "but we don't notice them
because they're so small, only a few millimeters in height,"
said mathematician David Hu of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. "But if you're a creature that's much smaller than
that, those slopes "are like frictionless mountains," said Hu.
"Plus, it's slippery."
Now, Hu and coworker John Bush have done the math to
explain how nearly weightless water walkers find the traction
to ascend a wall of water several times their height. Such
obstacles, which are almost invisible to humans, may surround
a leaf floating in a stream or a stone on the riverbank.
An article on the work appears in the Sept. 29 issue of the
journal Nature.
According to Bush, the study, which was funded by the
National Science Foundation, may be "of interest to people
working in nanotechnology, because they, too, are concerned
with problems at very small scales."
Read the full release from MIT at http://www.nsf.gov/cgi-bin/goodbye?http://www.web.mit.edu/newsoffice/
-NSF-
Media Contacts
Leslie Fink, NSF (703)
292-5395 lfink@nsf.gov
Elizabeth
Thomson, MIT (617) 258-5402 thomson@mit.edu
Related Websites
Meniscus-Climbing
Insects web site: http://www-math.mit.edu/~dhu/Climberweb/climberweb.html
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