Walking on water? Sounds too biblical or taken from an epic or myth or may be some weird Ninja folklore or cheap comic strip! Not anymore, the Carnegie Mellon University has again brought this kind of a fabulous concept to the forefront. Its ever-enthusiastic NanoRobotics lab has been working on surface tension and has developed a robotic water strider that can walk on still water.
We all know effectual surface tension causes the surface layers of water or any liquid to behave like an elastic sheet. Have you ever seen small objects like needles or razor blades or foil fragments to float on the surface of water? Or, as a child have you ever thrown stones at some still water, which results in a layered wave creation. These are just means to explain the invisible surface tension. In other words, it can be explained as elasticity or micro-gravity.
It is this nature of liquid or water that helps insects like water striders to walk on water. Surprisingly, it is also one of the fastest means of moving in water. The water striders run as fast as 100 body-lengths per second, equivalent to a human being running 400 meters in ah hour. Based on this theory, the robotic water strider from Carnegie Mellon University’s Nanorobotics lab has been developed.
Now, how far it helps us in using it to do further research is still unknown, but we may expect to see a number of prospective applications. So, water walking isn’t really super human, it is within human reach, let just put a step forward.
Source: Botjunkie
