• Question: What is stronger: steel wire or spider web if they were the same thickness?

    Asked by to Anna, Elaine, Fiona, Kevin, Darren on 25 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Zhiming Darren Tan

      Zhiming Darren Tan answered on 25 Jun 2014:

      Spider silk is of comparable strength to high grade steel – so some steel is stronger and some steel is weaker.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider_silk#Strength

    • Photo: Fiona McLean

      Fiona McLean answered on 26 Jun 2014:

      This is a really interesting thought!

      It depends what you measure as strength. If it is the tensile strength (the amount of stress a material can put up with before it breaks) then spider’s silk is comparable to steel. However, what makes spider’s silk really special is it’s flexibility. This makes structures made from spider’s silk (i.s. spider’s web) very resilient, which is quite unique to nature. The link below explains this in a bit more detail and has a really good video showing how webs are so strong!

      http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/16809642

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