A) The water striders use the surface tension of water for their advantage so they can walk on water. The legs of a water strider have many tiny hydrophobic hairs that repel water. Using their legs they distribute their weight over a wide surface area. Following figure shows the free body diagram with different forces.
3. Surface tension of a water strider For an animal the size of a human, surface...
3. Surface tension of a water strider For an animal the size of a human, surface tension seems to be a rather small and insignificant force (though it plays an important if unnoticed role in our breathing). But as animals get smaller, surface tension gets increasingly significant. (The weight of the animal goes down with the cube of the size while the surface tension only decreases linearly.) For animals like the basilisk lizard and the jacana (bird), they appear to...
3. Surface tension of a water strider For an animal the size of a human, surface tension seems to be a rather small and insignificant force (though it plays an important if unnoticed role in our breathing). But as animals get smaller, surface tension gets increasingly significant. (The weight of the animal goes down with the cube of the size while the surface tension only decreases linearly.) For animals like the basilisk lizard and the jacana (bird), they appear to...
3. Surface tension of a water strider For an animal the size of a human, surface tension seems to be a rather small and insignificant force (though it plays an important if unnoticed role in our breathing). But as animals get smaller, surface tension gets increasingly significant. (The weight of the animal goes down with the cube of the size while the surface tension only decreases linearly.) For animals like the basilisk lizard and the jacana (bird), they appear to...
Question 3. A-C 3. Surface tension of a water strider For an animal the size of a human, surface tension seems to be a rather small and insignificant force (though it plays an important if unnoticed role in our breathing). But as animals get smaller, surface tension gets increasingly significant. (The weight of the animal goes down with the cube of the size while the surface tension only decreases linearly.) For animals like the basilisk lizard and the jacana (bird),...
20 points) Water striders walk on water by taking advantage of surface tension; they live on the surfaces of ponds, vers, and even the open ocean. A team of scientists at MIT decided to build a robotic water strider to mimic the true strider's locomotion and lean more about not just how it floats, but how it moves around the surface of the water (see picture below) Both the actual water strider and its robotic counterpart are held up by...