Pod Insights StarTalk Podcast Sticky Science: The Force Be With You with Laurie Winkless About this episode What are Van der Waals forces? Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-hosts Chuck Nice and Gary O’Reilly explore the fascinating world of surfaces, biomimicry, and Formula 1 with physicist and author of Sticky: The Science of Surfaces, Laurie Winkless.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Welcome to StarTalk. Your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. This is Sports Edition. And I got with me my co-host, one of two for this format, Chuck Nice. Chuck, how you doing, man?
0:27 Chuck Nice? Hey, man. Yeah, Sports Edition. I'm the guy who, in whatever iteration of sports, I'm the guy bringing the water.
0:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Is that what you do? Gatorade?
0:37 Chuck Nice? I'm the Gatorade guy. That's me. Hey, how you doing? You thirsty? You thirsty? You need some electrolytes there, buddy?
0:45 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's gonna squirt it into your mouth?
0:47 Chuck Nice? Yeah, exactly.
0:50 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right, we got Gary O'Reilly. Gary from the UK. You're with the Stateside now, I think, but you're
0:58 Gary O'Reilly? I am, yes.
0:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Recently in the UK. Played professional soccer there. For professional football, I guess they call it. And you were an announcer there. So we are delighted to have both of those features within you for this. So Gary, just tell me what you got up your sleeve for today.
1:15 Gary O'Reilly? Um, something we take for granted, Neil. Imagine surfaces. We engage with so many everyday smartphones, our clothing, footwear, kitchens, even paint. But what is happening at a molecular level?
1:31 Chuck Nice? Oh, they're all disgusting. That's what's happening at a molecular level. They're all nasty.
1:36 Gary O'Reilly? All right, well, we'll see if that's the case. I mean, is it material science? Is it physics?
1:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, I didn't know you had such strong opinions about molecules. This is, this
1:45 Chuck Nice? I do. Especially when they form bonds that actually hurt.
1:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, got it. Molecular bonds. Okay. Go on, Gary. We interrupted you.
1:54 Gary O'Reilly? All right, so, I mean, and then we'll get to the friction, which happens when certain surfaces connect. And then we have biomimicked so much from Mother Nature and tried to recreate her work. And we've even taken these inventions into space. So we'll go there as well. But really, right now, what we need is someone who could Make paint drying seem interesting. And I think what we have is just the person. So Neil, if you would like to introduce our guest today, then we'll go from there.
2:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'd be happy to. So we've got Laurie Winkless. Laurie, did I pronounce that correctly?
2:31 Speaker 03 Perfectly, Neil. Yeah, well done.
2:33 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excellent. You're coming to us with an Irish accent, but at the moment you're in New Zealand.
2:40 Speaker 03 I am.
2:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very cool. Thank you. Thank you for hanging with us, even though you're on the other side of the earth at some unholy time of day in this interview, because it's a regular time of day for us.
2:51 Speaker 03 Oh, it's all good. It's almost 9 a.m. It's all good.
2:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, that's okay. Okay, 9 a.m. tomorrow.
2:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, tomorrow, in the future.
2:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For us.
2:59 Gary O'Reilly? She's from the future. She's from the future.
3:03 Chuck Nice? You're rather sprite to be coming to us from the future.
3:06 Speaker 03 It's much better here.
3:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Early morning tomorrow. You have a background in physics and in space and in working in national labs. You're a science communicator, a lecturer. I love it all. You've got books. One of them is called, was it Science and the City?
3:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, that was my first book.
3:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I love it. Wonderful title. And most recently, what's called Sticky, The Secret Science of Surfaces. And that sounds all about friction. We've done several shows talking about friction in sports. So this will fit right into that, to that portfolio. So, so let me, let me just sort of start off. I think I'd start a question I got for you. So I think people want to know about gecko feet.
3:57 Chuck Nice? By the way, isn't that gecko from New Zealand?
4:00 Speaker 03 There is a gecko in New Zealand, and it's a very unusual one because it lives in the mountains. It's an alpine gecko.
4:06 Chuck Nice? No, I was talking about the Geico gecko.
4:10 Gary O'Reilly? Oh no, not him.
4:11 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What accent does the gecko gecko have?
4:13 Chuck Nice? What accent does the gecko gecko have?
4:14 Gary O'Reilly? He's in East London. You'll know this Laurie, there's a soap opera in England called EastEnders. It's based in the east end of London.
4:22 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We have it here.
4:23 Gary O'Reilly? Yep, he is one of the cast members.
4:25 Speaker 03 Oh.
4:26 Chuck Nice? Oh.
4:26 Gary O'Reilly? And he's not putting on a voice. That's him.
4:29 Chuck Nice? That's him. That's just him.
4:31 Gary O'Reilly? Although he's not green.
4:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? The gecko isn't the actor who is that voice is a cast member.
4:36 Gary O'Reilly? Yes, not the gecko.
4:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm sorry. Because the last time I saw EastEnders, I don't remember talking animals.
4:41 Chuck Nice? I don't remember the gecko.
4:42 Speaker 03 Talking gecko would make it a lot more interesting.
4:44 Gary O'Reilly? All right Laurie, let's unravel the gecko. So if I've got this right, you've got hairs on hairs on scales on toes on feet.
4:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's pretty much it actually Gary. Yeah, the gecko foot is what we call a hierarchical structure. So what that really means is that it has features of different sizes that combine together to give the gecko its climbing superpower, I suppose. So if you look at a little gecko's toes, usually the toes themselves are pretty strong. So that's often enough to get them to cling on to like a bark of a tree or whatever.
5:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just to be clear Laurie, I've never done this. You said if you look at a gecko's toes.
5:21 Speaker 03 You've never looked at a gecko's toes?
5:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'm sorry.
5:24 Chuck Nice? Yeah, I understand that there's a fetish site where you can do it.
5:29 Gary O'Reilly? Oh no. I really hope not.
5:31 Speaker 03 Okay, so I'll take a step back. Geckos usually have four legs. I'll start there. They're little lizards. And they have, depending on their species, like four or five toes on each foot. Okay? So the thing about their toes is, and sometimes if you see them at maybe a zoo or something, if you see them on a glass surface, that's usually the best way to get a real like insight into what's going on. So you've got their little feet. On their toes, their toes are covered in these flaps of skin and they're called lamelle. They're just stripes of skin. And for the longest time, scientists, you know, we just thought that that was, it was to do with those flaps of skin. Like maybe they were acting as some sort of like a suction cup or maybe.
6:12 Chuck Nice? They look like a pad.
6:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly.
6:14 Chuck Nice? When they're pressed against a flat surface, they look kind of like a pad.
6:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, they flatten out. So like that was what we thought, that was all we thought the geckos could do. But like as microscopes began to develop more and get better and better and we could zoom in a bit further. Like Gary said, we realized those flaps of skin are actually covered in this very, very dense forest of hairs. And they're called sitae. So they're just hairs, but they increase the surface area so much. So it's now not a flat bit of skin. It's a really heavily textured forest of hairs. If you zoom in on the end of each of those hairs, you'll find that they actually, they each have like a really bad case of split ends, right? So each one of those hairs splays
6:57 Speaker 03 out into lots of other smaller hairs. And the ends of those hairs can make such intimate contact with surfaces. Now, when I mean intimate contact, I mean getting within one nanometer of the molecules that make up the surface.
7:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh.
7:15 Speaker 03 Yeah.
7:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what you're saying is the surfaces we might think are smooth, but on the, on the very small level, they're not.
7:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
7:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And so if you have something small enough.
7:23 Speaker 03 Yep.
7:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? To get in the nooks and the crannies, especially the crannies.
7:26 Speaker 03 Yeah.
7:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Then I don't know the difference between a nook and a cranny. Chuck, you have any insight into that?
7:31 Chuck Nice? Yeah. The nooks are not as delicious.
7:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? As the crannies. Okay.
7:37 Speaker 03 But yeah, everything is rough. So what you really want to do is you want to increase the contact points as much as possible if you want to get to, to get to touch the surface as much as possible. So like when you will see geckos and if you see them in the wild, they can climb on everything. You know, they're running across waxy leaves and wet rocks. They can climb on glass. They can be inverted on sheets of glass, which are a material, it's a material we think of as really smooth. But yeah, as Neil said, on the micro scale, it's not smooth. It's very rough and textured. So these tiny hairs can kind of get in there and they can start, it's, it's a force called van der Waals interaction. It's a force that
8:18 Speaker 03 you can only tap into when atoms are close enough together. And that is what the gecko uses. Like the gecko's foot is effectively feeling for electrons in the atoms of whatever the surfaces that they're climbing on.
8:34 Chuck Nice? What, what, what you're kind of describing on an atomic level is Velcro.
8:38 Speaker 03 Yeah. Yeah. To be honest, it's very similar.
8:40 Chuck Nice? Yeah. It's, it's, it's basically like. It's electric, electric Velcro. It's molecular Velcro with, with electrons and, and, and looking for a signal rather than just, you know.
8:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Clasping together and pulling apart.
8:53 Speaker 03 Yeah, and the thing that's even more impressive about the Gecko's version of this Velcro is that it can detach really quickly. So you know when you're pulling Gecko or pulling Gecko's apart, don't do that.
9:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yes, yeah.
9:05 Speaker 03 When you're pulling.
9:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's my favorite, it's my favorite pastime, by the way, Laurie.
9:08 Speaker 03 When you're pulling Velcro apart, you get that like really loud noise and it takes quite a lot of force. But a Gecko, all a Gecko needs to do is it curls its toes back and that changes the angle that those split ends, those hairs are making with the, with the surface and that turns off its stickiness instantly. So Gecko's can turn on and off their stickiness depending on the orientation of their toes. And that's why.
9:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Otherwise, they wouldn't be able to actually walk.
9:36 Speaker 03 Exactly.
9:36 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, you, you place them down or they just get stuck there forever.
9:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, being ultra sticky isn't that useful, to be honest. Like you want to be able to turn it on when you need it and turn it off when you want to scarper. So yeah, the Gecko like has all of these features that are all working together to get that contact at the atomic level, at the, you know, really talking about electrons to, in order to climb. Yeah, they're amazing, little lizards.
10:00 Chuck Nice? Amazing.
10:01 Gary O'Reilly? Am I right here, am I right here, Laurie, where you get a Gecko that may be a half a pound or a pound in weight, right? And you stick it to the ceiling and then it can hold nearly 300 pounds of weight.
10:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, in theory.
10:17 Gary O'Reilly? A, how? A, the question is broke down into two parts. A, how? And B, how on earth do you test that it can hold that much weight without being crawled to a Gecko?
10:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Unfortunately, there's a few Gecko's who gave their life for that experiment.
10:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. To be honest, if you look back at the early history of Gecko research, there really are a lot of Gecko's that were treated badly. But in terms of this research, it's really based on a measurement taken on a single one of those hairs and then they scale it up to, yeah, I mean, so it's kind of, that's why I say in theory, right? There's this kind of a scaling question. Because, you know, really a Gecko shouldn't ever need to, you know, be able to support that sort of force. But why it's so good is because it's not usually in a lab, right? Like I said, it's usually running around in the forest.
11:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I don't want the Geico company to learn about this because they'll make TV commercials where that little Geico Gecko is saving people.
11:16 Speaker 03 Yeah. Oh, no, we don't want that.
11:18 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right, right, right, right.
11:19 Chuck Nice? Actually, Neil, that's kind of cool.
11:22 Chuck Nice? So wait, before we, uh, cause I know we're gonna get off of geckos in a minute, but I'm just fascinated because we're talking about sticky, so I know we gotta leave the gecko. However, when you look at the design of their anatomy, is that also to disperse their weight?
11:38 Speaker 03 Yep.
11:39 Chuck Nice? So that they can do these things you're talking about?
11:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, what a good question.
11:43 Chuck Nice? They're like, super stretched out.
11:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:45 Chuck Nice? With a tiny little skinny body.
11:47 Speaker 03 Totally. They absolutely do. The whole animal has a role to play. It's not just its toes. Um, like for a start, they kind of do jazz hands when they're, when they're trying to get, they try to balance out the forces as much as possible. So a gecko-
12:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? For the non dancers out there, jazz hands are fully open, palm forward, all fingers spread.
12:06 Speaker 03 Indeed.
12:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's showtime, folks.
12:08 Speaker 03 Showtime, yes. Well, yeah, on the ceiling, they'll do that so that their toes are pointing in opposite directions so that the forces are all spread out evenly across all of their toes. And a gecko can very easily just cling with, with the single toe. Um, they don't need all of their toes to be perfectly engaged in order to be able to climb. Yeah, they're amazing.
12:27 Gary O'Reilly? That's just showing off. So, okay, so now, once, once we, because it's taken us basically till the 21st century to really get a grip on understanding what's keeping a gecko glued to a wall or a ceiling.
12:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I see what you did there, Gary. So get a grip on this. Yeah.
12:41 Gary O'Reilly? Uh huh. Thank you.
12:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I see what you did there.
12:43 Gary O'Reilly? And I know, these things aren't just thrown together.
12:48 Gary O'Reilly? We've mimicked that. And we, we came up, we being very smart people, not me, came up with gecko tape. And we have actually gone into space with things based on a gecko's feet.
13:01 Chuck Nice? Are these real things? What's gecko tape?
13:03 Speaker 03 Yeah. So gecko-
13:05 Gary O'Reilly? Lolly?
13:06 Speaker 03 Gecko tape, it kind of came out of a lab at Stanford. And, um, what they've done is they, they know that it's, it's not possible. We, we do not have the ability to recreate the level of complex structure that a gecko has naturally evolved on its toes. But what they can do is they can kind of take some of the essential elements and kind of cheat a little bit, copy a little, copy some of that. Um, and what it looks like really, and I got to play with some myself when I visited, it's this, it's a silicone rubber, so a very flexible gray rubber. And if you look at it, it just looks quite rough. But if you look at it under a microscope, it's actually covered in tiny little wedges. So it's been patterned with these wedges that are angled. And they're at a similar angle to the sitte, these hairs on a gecko's foot.
13:50 Speaker 03 So what they do is you can apply that, if you have that on, say, like a robotic arm for something, you can bring that robotic arm up against, say, a solar panel if you're on the International Space Station. And you put the gecko tape up against whatever it is you're trying to pick up. And you tug it down slightly, there's just a little button on the, on the system. That's, that causes those wedges to splay out. So again, kind of tapping into the same idea as the hairs, although much, much larger than hairs. They, they're not quite as, they don't make quite such intimate contact. But because the gecko's so special, it doesn't need to make quite such intimate contact. It can make a little bit of it and it does, it does enough.
14:30 Speaker 03 So, um, you can do that without using like a suction cup, which is usually how we move big awkward things around. You can do it without using any electricity. There's a lot of grippers that we use, use electricity, electrostatics to pick stuff up. And they don't have any clamping forces. You can actually pick up very delicate things just by putting this gecko tape, the silicone rubber, onto the surface and causing its wedges to kind of splay out and move it around.
14:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Forgive me, but the first thing I thought of when you were describing this tape is a new arcade machine where you wanna get the toy inside the thing. You just, because you can never get it, right? You can never get the toy. With the clamp, we get some of your tape, we win.
15:14 Speaker 03 Every time, every time, yeah.
15:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, yeah. The toys are coming home with me. Okay. This is amazing. Yeah. So this is actually used in space now?
15:24 Speaker 03 Yeah. So it was, it was trialed initially on the vomit comet. And then it eventually went up on the International Space Station. I think it's had several trials now on the International Space Station to be used as a, as a low-gravity gripper manipulator. And it's already-
15:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Could you please tell the one in a hundred of our listeners, because that's all it will be, what the vomit comet is?
15:43 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah. So the vomit comet is one of NASA's test facilities. It's a plane, basically, that flies in a parabolic- Um, path and it simulates well, low gravity for short periods of time. So if you want to test something out in low gravity, that's a good way to do it. So they've been.
15:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or even zero.
16:00 Speaker 03 Or zero gravity. Yeah, indeed.
16:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah.
16:02 Speaker 03 If only I'd love to have a go in the vomit comet if anyone's listening. Um, but yeah, so it's.
16:07 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I'll put in a good word for you.
16:08 Speaker 03 Thanks Neil.
16:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? With Dramamine.
16:11 Speaker 03 Well, yeah, so it is, it is being used and it's actually already being developed and used in on factories on earth as well. So they're, they've commercialized some of these grippers to be used in, in robotic systems to, to pick up awkwardly shaped objects.
16:23 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
16:24 Gary O'Reilly? Wow.
16:25 Speaker 03 It's pretty cool.
16:26 Chuck Nice? That's more than cool.
16:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So tell me about, so tell me about the, uh, what happens if water is between your thing and the surface?
16:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Usually because, because water is like the enemy of tape.
16:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Right?
16:39 Chuck Nice? Yes.
16:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If you get tape wet, nothing sticks anyway, no how.
16:42 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what goes on there?
16:44 Chuck Nice? Uh, except for Flex Seal Tape, I have to tell you, I've seen those.
16:47 Speaker 03 Good stuff.
16:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:50 Chuck Nice? Sorry.
16:50 Speaker 03 Water, no, water is a problem. You're right, Neil. Um, the Gecko has evolved to, to cope with it because its feet, as well as being amazing for gripping, they're also hydrophobic. So those feet actively repel water. They push water out of the way so that they could make dry, effectively dry contact with whatever surface it's touching. Um, for the silicone tape, again, silicone itself is hydrophobic, so it tries to repel water as much as possible. It's not perfect, but it works well in also.
17:19 Chuck Nice? So let me ask you this, is there any way to take this type of technology and apply it to tires? Because I could see so many applications for, for a safety. As a matter of fact, there was a show called Speed Racer when I was a kid and one of them.
17:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I remember Speed Racer.
17:35 Chuck Nice? You remember Speed Racer? So Speed Racer had.
17:37 Gary O'Reilly? You're gonna sing again, aren't you? You're gonna sing. The pair of you are going to sing.
17:40 Chuck Nice? Oh my God. Make me, don't.
17:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Here comes Speed Racer. He's a demon on wheels.
17:46 Chuck Nice? Okay, okay. Anyway, one of the things were these super sticky tires that would allow the car to ride on any surface and even stick to the walls. And of course that can't happen, but.
17:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Or to not lose traction.
17:58 Chuck Nice? Or not to lose traction on a wet track.
18:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They actually stop NASCAR when it rains.
18:03 Speaker 03 Yeah.
18:04 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And if you and you've got this. All right, but we're gonna do tires in the next. Okay, well, oh, okay. Well, let's just do that way. Let's just do that. Hold on to that. But put a pin in that. And Laurie, you can hang out. We got two more segments with you. And this is just amazing. I mean, I, I, I want to do the whole thing on geckos. I do, too. We got a lot of. See?
18:25 Chuck Nice? Totally.
18:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who knew? I have never. I have never been so into geckos in my entire. Me neither. Me neither. It's like, oh, damn. And they come in different colors and different sizes.
18:37 Chuck Nice? They are adorable. They are wonderful little ad lizards.
18:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Damn, okay. When we come back, more StarTalk Sports Edition with surface expert Laurie Winkless.
18:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back, StarTalk Sports Edition. We spent an entire segment talking about gecko toes. But as, as, as interesting as that is to a naturalist, this is sports edition, damn it. And I want to know, how are we gonna put gecko feet on rubber? For cars and stuff, car races. Can we go there, Gary? Is that someplace you can take me? We can go anywhere we want. We've got gecko feet and wheels. Let's lay down the rubber on that. We got Laurie Winkless, who's an expert on gecko feet. Laurie, is that on your business card?
19:38 Chuck Nice? No, definitely not.
19:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What do you carry around on your business? Oh, my God. But anyway, I'm delighted you're coming to us from New Zealand. A beautiful countryside. I'm not the first nor the last to say that. And thank you for coming on the line with us here across the ocean.
19:55 Chuck Nice? My pleasure.
19:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In North America. Yeah, so, so Gary, take, take it over. All right, so here's something that may or may not be in people's thinking.
20:05 Gary O'Reilly? But it's a Wiki fact. Tribology, I'd never heard of it before, but it is the science and engineering of interacting surfaces in relative motion. It includes the study and application of the principles of friction. Now, I hadn't thought of that as a science, but tribology is what we have.
20:25 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Why don't they call it frictionology or something? Why they gotta be obscure about it?
20:29 Gary O'Reilly? Yeah. Because the ancient Greeks got there first and they've decided it's tribology.
20:34 Chuck Nice? All right. Slickology would be better.
20:37 Gary O'Reilly? There you go.
20:39 Chuck Nice? Yeah. So have you ever heard of that, Laurie?
20:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. So a lot of the, a lot of this book is about tribology. And the short version is like, it's the science of rubbing and scrubbing. That's how it's often described.
20:49 Chuck Nice? I love it.
20:50 Speaker 03 Which I love. Yeah.
20:52 Chuck Nice? I gotta tell you, that sounded a little sexual there, Laurie.
20:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, I mean, there's an entire chapter on lubrication as well, Chuck. So, yeah.
20:58 Chuck Nice? Oh.
20:58 Speaker 03 Plenty of opportunity for innuendo.
21:01 Chuck Nice? All right. All right. None of this is making the show. All right.
21:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What we've known and we've, and we've had shows on this very topic is that professional auto racing often, in fact, I might say all the time, leads automotive technologies with innovations that ultimately filter their way back to commercial vehicles. And, but we look at the tires, as far as it, you know, I see all the rest of the technology, they're still using rubber tires on the track. Is that, am I missing something there? What's either NASCAR or especially Formula One where the full rubber tire is sticking out all, all bare?
21:42 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? What, what's, what's?
21:43 Chuck Nice? When are we getting Gecko, when are we getting Gecko feet on our Formula One cars? And listen, if you think about it, when you look at racing slicks, okay, they're, they're kind of a, they've got to be a significant weight factor to the car. You know, so maybe that's something if you want to lighten the load, Gecko feet tires would be a great way to do it.
22:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, it's a funny one. The main problem with Echo Tape is that it's not very robust. So it's not actually very good. It wouldn't be very good under the weight of like a Formula One car or even just the Formula One tire, like you said. But I should say that they use rubber because it also, if it's designed well enough and if the track is smooth enough, it also can tap into those same forces, the van der Waals forces. Because like those big Formula One slick tires, they can make a similar intimate contact with a racetrack that a Gecko can make with a wall. Like racetracks are-
22:41 Chuck Nice? It's because they're soft at some levels, right? I mean, that's why they're called rubber, right? I mean, they're, they fill in the, any little microscopic gaps.
22:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly. Like tire-
22:51 Chuck Nice? What's up, baby? This is your, this is your tire. How you doing? Just trying to make a little intimate contact with-
23:02 Chuck Nice? You know? Just going one after hour.
23:05 Gary O'Reilly? Sorry, Laurie.
23:10 Gary O'Reilly? But so Laurie, so when you've got a Formula One race car and I mean, people like Lewis Hamilton will hammer the pedal down and this thing's gone over 200 miles per hour. Plus with a Formula One racetrack, you've got all sorts of curves, bends. I mean, a tire will go through all of these different forces, then a deformation, all the rest of it. How are you ensuring that it's still able to tap into those van der Waals forces under all these distresses?
23:37 Speaker 03 Yeah, really good question. The main, the main, there's two main ways that a tire makes contact with the road. And one of them is the way that normal tires make contact with the road, which is kind of what Neil said. It's about the rubber. Rubber is this material called, it's a viscoelastic material. So it's something a bit like a very viscous or sticky fluid and an elastic solid. So it's kind of sits somewhere in that range. And what it means is that tire rubber flows into all of those bumps and crevices and all of the, you know, roughness on a racetrack. And as it flows, it makes a kind of a frictional interaction. And that is mostly how tyres work, mostly how like road tyres will grip to the road.
24:19 Speaker 03 But Formula One tyres are usually flat, very, very particular compounds of rubber, like particularly their stickiness, their viscosity has been very well defined. And they're huge, right, this massive surface area that makes contact with the track. The track is usually also very smooth, so it can also tap into that van der Waals interaction, assuming the rubber can can actually just flow properly into the track. Now, sometimes you'll see a Formula One driver, and they talk about this, they talk about this in other motorsport too, about laying down some rubber, right? This idea of actually like the tyre degrading intentionally. Formula One is totally based on that. Those tyres are designed to degrade.
25:04 Speaker 03 They're designed to leave tiny, thin layers of rubber on the track. Because that increases the grip for the next time you go around the track. You lay down the rubber to increase the friction between your tyre the next time you pass by. But like on a normal car, you do not want your rubber to be degrading over the course of a few kilometres, right?
25:26 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, because they change their wheels in an F1, you know.
25:28 Speaker 03 Exactly. And Formula One tyres, like the cost, I can't even, I don't even know how much it would cost.
25:34 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, you don't want to have to change your wheels on the way to, you know, to the 7-Eleven, you know.
25:38 Speaker 03 No, no. Yes.
25:41 Gary O'Reilly? You know what, Chuck, you know, when you're talking about you want Gecko tyres, right? Gecko feet on a tyre. Have they, Larry, done exactly that? Because a Formula One race will take place in the rain. And they'll obviously then have a tread pattern on the tyre. Which then discharges an awful lot of surface water. So are they using a similar sort of technique? That a Gecko would for being.
26:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait Gary, do they swap out the tyres when it rains?
26:08 Speaker 03 Yeah.
26:09 Chuck Nice? Yes, they do.
26:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, got it.
26:10 Chuck Nice? It's a different, it's a different tyre with a normally with a channel through the middle of the tyre. And then some kind of, some, some type of channeling that moves the water away.
26:20 Speaker 03 Exactly, yeah.
26:21 Gary O'Reilly? Neil, they'll, they'll have a whole team to manage, to, to manage the tyre, to manage the setup of the car based on the weather. It could be humidity, temperature.
26:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I think they should have it also in snow, just to.
26:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, if you watch, like, if you watch rally, if you watch rally, they're, they're racing on ice, which is just crazy, but.
26:41 Gary O'Reilly? I know, but they don't have tyre changes, do they?
26:43 Speaker 03 Exactly, in rallycross, you're right.
26:44 Gary O'Reilly? No, but in Formula One you can.
26:45 Speaker 03 You have the luxury of that.
26:46 Gary O'Reilly? Are they able to push that super hydrophobic sort of setup?
26:51 Speaker 03 The rubber itself is a bit hydrophobic, it is, it does repel water, but really it's the design of those tread patterns that pushes the water out of the way. So like a Formula One, I think it's the 2020 Formula One tyres, I need to check, but they remove, they can remove about 65 litres of water per second when the car is moving at full speed. Like the, every single pattern on a tread has been designed to suck the water up and like Chuck said, kind of push it out the sides of the tyre so that the contact is as dry as they can possibly get it. Like there's a limit, right? There's a limit as to how much.
27:25 Chuck Nice? And so the tyre is basically a windshield wiper for the road.
27:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly, a very expensive windshield wiper.
27:32 Chuck Nice? A very expensive windshield wiper. So my, my question then is from a material standpoint, why not just do two things? One, increase the friction of the surface upon which you're driving. And two, make it so that the tyre becomes more interactive with that frictioned surface or that's, that, that surface that has more friction.
27:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Laurie, let me tighten up. Chuck's question?
28:00 Chuck Nice? Please.
28:01 Neil deGrasse Tyson? If, if, if the whole point is to have rubber grip into the texture of the track, why not actually chew up the track? So that the rubber is getting so in there, it's not even about friction. It's actually pushing off of vertical walls that have been cut into the track as you go around.
28:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think, I think the argument really is about you want to keep this a fast sport. Right. And friction, you need some of it in order to, you know, get the traction on the road to, to propel yourself forward. So you do need some friction. But if it's too high, then your car has a very, a much lower maximum speed. Right. It reduces how fast your car can go. So you've got the, and it's with friction.
28:48 Chuck Nice? So this is the point of equilibrium.
28:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
28:50 Chuck Nice? You gotta, you gotta find that, that, that balance point.
28:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, there's always a balance. There's always a compromise. Like you need some, but not too much. And then if you're, you know, if you're looking, if you're looking at like an ice sport, like it, like skiing or something like that, you're looking at trying to minimize friction. But it's always, you do need some, but just not everything. Cause if you have too much friction, things just grind to a halt.
29:13 Gary O'Reilly? Laurie, about 50 years ago, Formula One stumbled across a thing called carbon carbon. If I'm not mistaken. Um, and since then it's been part of the suspension shuttle. What's the, what's the connection?
29:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, carbon carbon is one of the materials that's used a lot in Formula One because it's very, very strong and it's very, very light. Um, and it's used, it's in Formula One's context, it's used in brakes. So it's used as a, as a lightweight way to produce a strong surface. And that you can, you know, interact with. Um, and as with most things, you know, they find applications elsewhere. I don't actually know which one came first in terms of carbon carbon, whether it was developed specifically for Formula One or whether it came about as a byproduct of, of another industry. Um, but yeah, it is very much a, it is very important material now in Formula One.
30:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, Laurie, forgive me, but can we be a little more explicit than just saying carbon carbon? Could you, could you tell me like what the hell that is?
30:13 Chuck Nice? I've heard of Duran, I've, I've heard of Duran Duran and.
30:16 Speaker 03 No, fair point. Fair point.
30:18 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
30:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And New York, New York.
30:20 Chuck Nice? Yeah, New York, New York.
30:24 Chuck Nice? Sachi and Sachi.
30:26 Speaker 03 So like, yeah, no, no, that's fair point. So like, if you've heard of carbon fiber, you might have heard of that. It's carbon, you know, it's like long strands of of carbon fiber arranged in some sort of matrix, some sort of polymer. But carbon carbon is those carbon fibers that have been arranged in a matrix of graphite. So the the actual matrix itself is carbon, but just little flakes of carbon. And then the fibers going through it are these very aligned carbon fibers. So it is carbon and carbon in two different forms slammed together.
30:58 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So two different forms of carbon. Okay. So if you threw in like diamond, you'd have carbon, carbon, carbon.
31:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
31:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just check, just check.
31:06 Speaker 03 Carbon cubes.
31:08 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And then as we found in the universe, as well as in the lab, there's buckyballs, right? Carbon sixty, another form of carbon. So just throw it all in there.
31:17 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Carbon, carbon, carbon.
31:18 Speaker 03 Exactly. Formula One has the money first, surely?
31:21 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, they sure do.
31:24 Gary O'Reilly? But they and they use that money to do something that I think a lot of people have been hoping to do for a long time, when they got a KERS system, the Kinetic Energy Recovery System. Um, and how advanced was their thinking to be able to bring that forward for motorsport? But we haven't seen it in the the general public.
31:46 Chuck Nice? You see some, you see a version of it.
31:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well, I have, I have a regenerative braking. Is that the same thing?
31:52 Chuck Nice? Yeah, I was gonna say, that's a version of it.
31:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Regenerative braking.
31:54 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:54 Gary O'Reilly? All right.
31:55 Speaker 03 It is the same thing. It's once we started putting electric motors into our cars, that that becomes something that you can, that's a really useful form of of energy to capture. Yeah.
32:04 Chuck Nice? Capture and return to the to the electric motor.
32:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So what does it hand it to a flywheel or something? Or is it a, what, what, in what form is it, is it recaptured as?
32:15 Speaker 03 Um, as far.
32:16 Chuck Nice? Yeah. And by the way, you should probably explain the whole concept because clearly we're all familiar. And I feel like we're a little inside baseball right now.
32:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, so it's like, it's what the idea-
32:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, we're inside friction.
32:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Well played, sir. Well played.
32:34 Speaker 03 Um, yeah, so the regenerative braking is effectively when you put the brake on, you effectively turn your motor into a generator. So you flip it around, you flip around its, its, uh, behavior. And so it generates electricity. And so, yeah, in a Formula One car, I believe it is just used in terms of electricity. It is just captured and used elsewhere in the car, but I'm actually not sure. So I won't pretend I know.
33:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wait, wait, just to be clear, you said when you put the brake on, let me, let me be, clarify that. What you mean is when you press the brake pedal-
33:08 Speaker 03 Yep.
33:09 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Brake pads are not touching your wheel. What's happening is the forward motion of your car is getting sucked away-
33:18 Speaker 03 Yep.
33:19 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Back into, isn't that what's happening? Yeah, that's it. Yep. That's, that's it. Yeah, yeah. So- Brilliant. Your kinetic energy is getting absorbed without even using friction-
33:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
33:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In that sense.
33:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, because usually brakes are just about like slamming on the friction as high as possible. But yeah.
33:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Flintstone feet.
33:40 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's what they are. There you go. Do they have Flintstones in, in New Zealand? I don't know.
33:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, I remember them as a kid though. Yeah, I definitely watched the Flintstones.
33:48 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, good. Flintstones. Yeah, yeah. That's the accelerator pedal and the brakes.
33:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
33:52 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah. Fred Flintstone, big old three-toed feet.
34:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They have four fingers and three toes. That disturbed me more than the fact that they're living in the Stone Age with- Do you know that this is the first time that I have heard that? And I, and you're right. I'm- You never noticed that?
34:12 Speaker 03 I've never noticed.
34:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I've never noticed that. Oh, my gosh! I have never- At least give the man four toes to match his four fingers.
34:20 Gary O'Reilly? Isn't there something about when the animator draws a hand with four fingers and a thumb? It looks wrong. And so they, that's why they, they take away one finger.
34:30 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, so, so, so Gary, four fingers never looked right to me. Okay? Ever. And especially not the three toes with his big old caveman feet. So.
34:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But they make great breaks. We gotta take a break. They're great recovery. We're talking about friction. We're talking about Formula One. We got rubber. We got Gecko feet. All in one frickin' conversation. Go figure. And at the center of all that is Lori Winkless. We'll be right back.
35:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? We're back. StarTalk Sports Edition. Everything friction and surfaces with one of the world's greatest exponents of this subject that I have ever seen. Lori Winkless, who's coming to us from from New Zealand. Lori, thanks for being on StarTalk and illuminating us with all of your surface wisdom.
35:34 Speaker 03 My pleasure.
35:37 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So when someone says, you know, it's only skin deep, you're saying, yeah.
35:41 Speaker 03 Exactly.
35:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's where the action is. So, so we've talked about what you've learned sort of scientifically from Mother Nature. And at the end of the day, stuff only really happens if people can make money off of it. If there's sort of product developments. Applications. Applications that can improve what we already have or invent something new that we never thought we needed. So do you have some good examples of that, maybe?
36:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'll give you one that it's still, I would say, at the research end of the R and D scale, but it's pretty exciting. And if it works, it could give us boats that never get wet, which I think is pretty cool. It's based-
36:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Boats that never get wet?
36:25 Speaker 03 They never get wet. No. So.
36:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Wow. That's like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, square sweets.
36:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly. Precisely, Gary. Yeah.
36:34 Chuck Nice? Okay. Yeah. So wait a minute, let me, let me just put this out. I mean, let me take this through. If the boat never gets wet, but it's moving through water, then that's about as frictionless as you could ever get. Yes, it's just moving through air. Super fast boat.
36:51 Speaker 03 Yeah.
36:52 Chuck Nice? Is that right?
36:52 Speaker 03 Yeah. And you've got, if you think about the fact that like 90% of the world's trade happens by sea.
36:58 Chuck Nice? Right.
36:58 Speaker 03 If we could reduce the friction that those massive container ships experience as they move through the water, you reduce the amount of fuel they use. You improve the environmental, you know, properties of that. So that is like something that a lot of different technologies are attempting to do. And you can already get boats that, you know, have a low friction coating on them. But one of the things I came across and I thought was really cool is there's this fern, it's called a salvinia fern, and it's usually like an invasive species. It, it forms these massive mats on the surface of, of waterways. So it can often cause that damage to anything living in the waterway. But the cool thing
37:38 Speaker 03 about it is that it is incredibly hydrophobic. So if you've heard of the lotus effect, which is this idea that the lotus is always pristine, water, nothing sticks to it, nothing ever, dirt doesn't touch it. It's kind of like that, but way better. It's way more impressive. And, and when scientists started to study what it is that makes this plant so good at repelling water, they started by looking at the surface. So in a way, it's kind of gecko-like. It's covered in loads and loads of hairs. And each one of those hairs is shaped a bit like a whisk, right? So it's kind of got four, it breaks into four that points the joint at the top. The whole leaf and all of these hairs are covered in a waxy surface,
38:20 Speaker 03 which makes it water repellent. But the cool thing is the very tip of that whisk is not water repellent. It's water attracting. It's hydrophilic. It attracts water. So what that means is that you trap a layer of air. The leaf traps a layer of air in its hairs. And because water is pinned on to the top of each one of those hairs, the air can't get out and the water can't penetrate in. So you have this permanent layer of air that the leaf has around itself.
38:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You're really explaining kind of a microscopic hydrofoil.
38:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, this is, and this is where, when like, when this, when the botanists kind of realized that this is what's going on, they managed to recreate it. They managed to kind of produce coatings that have a similar structure, this combination of hydrophobic, so water repellent, and hydrophilic, water attracting, and capturing this band of air. So what they want to do is develop a coating that you could apply to a boat that retains a layer of air around it permanently, a stable layer of air. And there are some boats that have these, they produce bubbles, like there's an actual system that sprays out bubbles around the edge of a boat to try and reduce the friction in a similar way, but it's just not as stable as something that would be, you know, a solid layer of air.
39:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Laurie, I thought I remembered a, was it a TV commercial? I might have been, I think it was YouTube surfing, I think I was. And I came across, it was like a container of mayonnaise and a container of ketchup. Yes! Two famously bottle-sticking substances. And they just tipped over the mayonnaise and all the mayonnaise just came right out of the container.
40:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
40:06 Neil deGrasse Tyson? They tipped the ketchup bottle and all the ketchup just came, nobody was shaking it or pounding it or squeezing it. Did it have one of these surfaces that you're talking about?
40:14 Speaker 03 No, it's actually got another surface that's called, yeah, it's called slick. There's so many, honestly, guys, there's so many.
40:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? There's so many surfaces! Out of control! Oh my goodness, we're filthy with surfaces!
40:25 Speaker 03 You see now why I had to write a whole book about them, because they're just amazing. Yeah, so that's a different material, actually. And what it does is that basically, they have, they put a coating that's porous, so it's got loads of holes in it, but then it's, those holes are filled with water. So it's kind of using water to stop other liquids from sticking to it. Um. So they've textured it in a way that um it traps its own little layer of of of water so that the ketchup then just falls out or the mayonnaise just falls out.
40:55 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Just to show you how biased we are, just as members of civilization. I'm looking at that demo and I'm thinking, what's wrong with the ketchup?
41:02 Chuck Nice? Exactly.
41:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, I'm not eating that ketchup.
41:04 Chuck Nice? Yeah, I'm not either.
41:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a ketchup issue, not a surface issue. That's what I'm thinking to myself.
41:08 Speaker 03 It does look a bit creepy.
41:10 Chuck Nice? It looks creepy. It's it, you know, it looks creepy.
41:13 Neil deGrasse Tyson? God made ketchup to stick to the inside of a ball.
41:15 Chuck Nice? Right. It's like seeing peanut butter slide out of a jar.
41:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? That's wrong.
41:20 Chuck Nice? If you ever saw peanut butter slide out of anything, you would not.
41:24 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Run, walk, don't run, run, don't walk, away from that.
41:27 Chuck Nice? That peanut butter is sentient.
41:28 Speaker 03 Yeah. No, totally. It is quite disconcerting, I have to say, yeah.
41:33 Chuck Nice? Exactly. Well, what about um when you talk about, so your um surfaces that slip and slide? Is there anything that can make something more aerodynamic? Like you put a coating on a football and now, uh, you know, instead of being able to throw it 30 yards, I can throw it 50 yards or kick it more, more importantly.
41:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, good point. And actually, that's kind of where like golf balls came from as well. Because the original golf balls were were smooth. And they were made from um basically they pack loads of a ball of leather with these feathers, make it really, really hard, smooth surface. But they realized that the ball would travel further when it had been dinged up a bit. So when it had some like dints in it, dents in it. So there was a scientist who decided that this was all a bit too, you know, experimental. So he wanted to do some proper analysis on it. And he designed what we now know.
42:26 Chuck Nice? Anecdotal.
42:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, anecdotal. Yeah, sorry, excuse me. Yeah. So he wanted to do some proper experiments. Um. And yeah, he designed a pattern, which is now what we know as a golf ball pattern, this dimpled pattern. And that reduces the drag on a golf ball by playing with the way that. The air flows around it and and the formation of these little vortexes, these little areas of low pressure, and it that that dimple pattern kind of makes it plays around with turbulence in a in a way to reduce drag. So like a dimpled ball will travel about about twice as far as a smooth golf ball of the same dimensions.
43:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So so it's really travelling in its own pocket of of low friction air. Is that a fair way to say that?
43:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, like everything moving through the air has a layer of kind of stuck air molecules right on its surface. And as the air, as you get further away from the surface, the air moves more and more and more. And
43:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, air sticks to me all the time. I try to
43:26 Speaker 03 Exactly. It's a pain. It's so sticky, you don't even realise.
43:29 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who's ever thinking that way?
43:31 Gary O'Reilly? So Laurie, is that is that the sort of thing that's going on with an aircraft, say, that was flying at thirty thousand feet? The temperature outside, the air temperature outside is minus something silly, right?
43:42 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Forty below.
43:43 Gary O'Reilly? And yet there's, yeah, and yet there's a an issue for overheating. What what what are we experiencing?
43:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's exactly that. It's skin friction. So it's effectively the air molecules bashing into other air molecules that are stuck onto the surface of of the aircraft. And even though at many, it depends on the altitude, of course, but the density of air can be lower than it is on this on the surface of the earth, there's still plenty of air molecules to bash into one another. So the the moving through the
44:14 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Especially at five hundred miles an hour.
44:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly. Moving through the air at high speeds, you are causing massive transfers of kinetic energy. You know, you are caught, you are bashing air molecules out of the way like crazy. And in that process, you you lose some some of that kinetic energy transforms into heat energy transforms into that the high temperatures on the surface. So like a lot of the very, very high speed aircrafts are and like reentry vehicles, they've been designed, their their surface chemistry has been really particularly designed to be able to cope with that happening on their surface. That's why, you know, heat, heat shields are so important. Yeah.
44:55 Gary O'Reilly? I mean, we've discussed surfaces contacting each other, but we haven't discussed how we as humans interact with surfaces, particularly through our own skin.
45:07 Gary O'Reilly? What, what happens at a molecular level? When we are touching and feeling surfaces?
45:14 Chuck Nice? And how do I become Spider-Man with my own form of gecko feet?
45:17 Speaker 03 Well, yeah, there's a, there's a dude, I think it's at San Diego University, Chuck, who could sort you out. He developed a climber based on the gecko tape. So he managed to scale the building, well, a few stories of a building on his own.
45:29 Chuck Nice? Wow, really?
45:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, Elliot Holt.
45:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It depends if they do it at Stanford, yeah.
45:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly. He was in that Stanford labs, yeah.
45:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, but it is true, however, there are some things, um, you know, sometimes, I don't know, it depends on how oily or not your skin is, there could be something on a, on a, on the ground that you just touch it and it stick, like a playing card maybe will stick to your finger. Sometimes a penny might stick to your finger.
45:56 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
45:57 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Some light little things will stick to your finger.
46:00 Speaker 03 Yeah.
46:00 Neil deGrasse Tyson? But I don't want to claim gecko powers.
46:02 Speaker 03 Nah.
46:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Um, so what's going on with that when that happens?
46:05 Speaker 03 It's basically that we're a bit damp. Humans have this constant layer of water.
46:10 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I thought it was gonna be a deep explanation, Laurie.
46:12 Speaker 03 No, unfortunately not. We're just a bit damp.
46:15 Chuck Nice? It's just that we're, we're sweaty.
46:15 Speaker 03 Yeah. We just have water on us and usually that's enough to, you get effectively a capillary force, the, the water that are, you know, we are producing water all the time, we respire. And so we are constantly covered in a little, very thin layer of water. And sometimes that means that we can, you know, stick a spoon to our nose or we can pick up a piece of paper just by touching it.
46:39 Chuck Nice? Oh, I thought it was the vaccine that made that happen.
46:41 Speaker 03 No, no.
46:41 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Sticking this, sticking this to you.
46:44 Chuck Nice? I thought it was the vaccine, just like, got vaccinated, look at me, I'm magnetic now. Uh, who's gonna fix this?
46:53 Gary O'Reilly? All right, Laurie, before, before we, we, we have to let you go sadly, um, we, I mean, we're thrilled by the gecko, I think we all have.
47:02 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Laurie, can you join the show?
47:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, sure. No problem. I do.
47:08 Gary O'Reilly? Are there many other species out there that are kind of like owning it?
47:13 Speaker 03 Yes, yes. Sharks.
47:15 Gary O'Reilly? Ooh, go on.
47:16 Speaker 03 Sharks.
47:17 Chuck Nice? What?
47:17 Speaker 03 Sharks are.
47:19 Gary O'Reilly? Fur, furry, furry cuddly sharks?
47:22 Speaker 03 Perfect.
47:23 Chuck Nice? Okay, but wait a minute. Why would a shark need to grip anything?
47:27 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, she's talking about surfaces.
47:28 Speaker 03 The offices. Yeah.
47:30 Chuck Nice? Oh, how they move through the water.
47:32 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Who owns their surface?
47:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
47:34 Chuck Nice? Yes. There you go.
47:35 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, keep going, Laurie.
47:36 Chuck Nice? I'm still stuck on Gekko.
47:37 Speaker 03 No, I don't believe you.
47:39 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I see what you did there. Stuck on Gekko, yes. Okay. Go on, Laurie.
47:43 Speaker 03 No, sharks are...
47:43 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Don't mind Chuck. Just ignore him. Go.
47:46 Speaker 03 Sharks are incredible. And if you look at their skin, and you don't even have to have a particularly fancy microscope. Don't do this to a living shark, right? I'm talking about like a museum. Don't touch a shark. But their skin is covered in these features called dermal denticles. And they're like very tiny scales. They're kind of like scales, but they're actually 3D. They're a real structure. And what scientists have realized is that we kind of knew that the shape and the placement of those denticles all over a shark's body must have something to do with reducing drag. It must have something to do with making it easier for them to move through the water. But what scientists realized in more recent years is that what's happening with these dermal denticles is that on some parts of a shark's body,
48:31 Speaker 03 it's the flow of water around this denticle actually behaves in a way as if it's gone in reverse. So it's as if the water is actually pushing the shark forward. It's not just reducing drag. It's actively helping the shark to accelerate through the water.
48:52 Chuck Nice? So the shark is drafting itself?
48:55 Speaker 03 Yeah.
48:56 Chuck Nice? Yeah. That is unbelievable.
48:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, they're incredible.
48:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, but wait a minute. Laurie, let's bring in some evolution here. Because, no, I got a question. You know, I can't claim to have hung out with sharks, okay? So I don't know of what I speak. But I don't picture sharks...
49:16 Neil deGrasse Tyson? In high pursuit of their prey, I picture them stalking their prey. All right, and, and so why would speed have been selected for in their skin water surfaces? If that's not really what they're doing.
49:36 Speaker 03 Very good point. And they, I think the kind of the idea around it now is that these denticles have a different role to play on different parts of the body. So there are different sizes and shapes depending on, and they differ between species of sharks as well. So some sharks are more of a, they're more about speed, they're more about reducing drag. But in terms of increasing speed and reducing drag, really what that does is it decreases the amount of energy a shark needs to use to push its way through the water.
50:07 Chuck Nice? And importantly, importantly, because sharks have to move in order to breathe, you would want that to, you would like that to be as, as easy as possible. Because when you do need to go hunt, you haven't used up all your energy swimming around so you can breathe.
50:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
50:23 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Yeah, I'll give you that because I, I just know that if sharks were fast moving, chase you down to meet predators, then you couldn't have that slow cello in Jaws.
50:38 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You know, that, that, that, that, is it a cello or a bass?
50:44 Chuck Nice? No, it's, it is, I think you're right, it's a cello.
50:46 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It's a cello. So whichever it is, it's like, that's not the music you hear of something rapidly chasing something else. So it all worked out.
50:53 Chuck Nice? Yeah.
50:53 Neil deGrasse Tyson? It all worked out for the movie.
50:55 Chuck Nice? And by the way, we're gonna need a bigger boat.
50:59 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Chuck, you know, I thought you were above that, Chuck.
51:03 Neil deGrasse Tyson? I've got the lowest hanging fruit. That fruit was already on the ground.
51:08 Chuck Nice? If you ever mention Jaws, I have to say that. I can't, I have to. It's a law.
51:17 Neil deGrasse Tyson? So Laurie, we gotta, I think we gotta close this out. Do you have a social media we can track you down on?
51:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'm on Twitter, like way too much. So I'm at Laurie underscore winkless on there.
51:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? And winkless is just wink and then less?
51:30 Speaker 03 Yes, wink less.
51:31 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very good. And your books, tell me the titles again, they're so great.
51:34 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah. So Sticky is just out. It's literally just came out a month ago in the US. And so Sticky, The Secret Science of Surfaces. And my older book is Science and the City. And that's all about how cities work and, and what happens in the, in the metropolis.
51:49 Neil deGrasse Tyson? This is beautiful. I love it. I love it. And what are you working on now? What can we, in the future? Because we totally want to bring you back. Give us an excuse to bring you back.
51:58 Speaker 03 And what I'm working on right now is an article on chocolate making, physics of chocolate making, which is something I'm finding quite interesting. And but I've no new.
52:05 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Okay, can we book you tomorrow?
52:07 Speaker 03 I have to learn about it, yes.
52:08 Chuck Nice? And by the way, by the way, can we, can we, can we do some research for you?
52:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'll send you some samples. But yeah, nothing else immediate. No, no more books in the immediate pipeline, anyway. Take a break for a little while.
52:20 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Very cool. So, all right, guys, we're calling, we, we gotta end it there. So Gary, Chuck, always good to have you doing this, man.
52:27 Chuck Nice? Pleasure.
52:27 Gary O'Reilly? Pleasure.
52:28 Neil deGrasse Tyson? All right. And Laurie, it's been a delight to have you on this program. We learned so much about stuff we didn't even know there was something to learn about. So that's always a good day. At, at, at least for me and I'm sure for Chuck and Gary.
52:40 Speaker 03 It was super fun. I listened to the show, so it was really fun to, to be on it.
52:44 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Oh, you do? Okay, well, thanks, you're a fan.
52:46 Chuck Nice? Aye.
52:47 Neil deGrasse Tyson? Excellent, excellent. So I hope we lived up to your expectations.
52:50 Speaker 03 Very much.
52:51 Neil deGrasse Tyson? You certainly exceeded ours. So, all right, this has been StarTalk Sports Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.
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