Spinnen brachten Wissenschaftlern bei, wie man unsinkbares Metall herstellt

Submission statement:

A team at the University of Rochester has etched aluminum tubes so that they won’t sink, even when damaged—a trick the scientists borrowed from [spiders](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/spiders-build-giant-decoys-to-scare-predators-from-webs/).

“You can poke big holes in them,” said Chunlei Guo, a professor of optics and physics at the University of Rochester and senior author of the research, in a [press release](https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/unsinkable-metal-tubes-superhydrophobic-surfaces-691642/). “We showed that even if you severely damage the tubes with as many holes as you can punch, they still float.”

The implications of [Guo’s work](https://advanced.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/adfm.202526033) go beyond the laboratory. Linked tubes could create weight-bearing rafts or ships. Engineers might be closing in on the dream of ships that stay afloat even as water pours into their hulls. One surprising application involves energy: Guo’s team demonstrated that rafts made of the tubes could harvest waves to generate electricity.

Read more: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unsinkable-metal-discovery-could-build-safer-ships-and-harvest-wave-energy/](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/unsinkable-metal-discovery-could-build-safer-ships-and-harvest-wave-energy/)