Strong and Light: Image Gallery (continued)

Natural Materials

Spider silk has some amazing properties.

• It feels like silk, and is as elastic as nylon.
• It is 3× lighter than Kevlar (the strongest manmade fibers, used in bulletproof vests) and up to 30× stronger!
• If spider silk fibers were created to have the diameter of a small pencil and spun into a web, they would be able to stop a 747 jet in mid-air (like you see in Spiderman)!

Wood exhibits a high strength-to-weight ratio due to its cellular microstructure. The way the cells of the tree grow (in grains) helps to make the wood strong.

Even different woods have different properties. Balsa wood is extremely light, for example, but when formed into the right shapes is also extremely strong. This structure made of balsa wood and super glue weighed only 18 grams but supported 990 kg before breaking!!

Bamboo is another of nature's resources for building materials.