CHEN Mingling 陈鸣惊 LIU Zhenli 刘臻莉 LI Jingyan 李婧言
When a spider crawls to an exposed point, it is essentially putting itself on top of a lightning rod (any sharp structure protruding up from an object on the ground, such as the leaves on a tree, will cause an increase in the strength of the surrounding electric field). Then, as the spider releases its silk, the strands pick up negative charges, and since like charges repel each other, the silk is pushed up and away from the negatively charged surfaces upon which the spider is perched.
We know that spiders use electric fields to fly, and that the trichobotria on their legs are an important organ for them to sense whether the electric field is suitable for flight. So in the beginning, we tried to bring people into the theme of ‘physical force’ by visualising the forces generated by static electricity and trying to understand the ability to fly in the shoes of a spider.
In the process of making and reviewing YouTube, we gradually changed our minds and realised that static electricity is a very specific aspect of spider survival , if we just visualise static electricity, it doesn’t bring out the natural perspective. So we need to create a sensory organ rather than a whole spider flying machine.
So in the second try we hope that human can expand their senses ( of electric field ) and sense the physical forces that cannot be seen with this organ. In fact, we designed the experiment to mimic the process of “feeling the force” and “determining whether it is possible to fly”, but in fact, for the spider, the combination of the two is what it really feels.
Finally, we have now completed the trichobotria, which determines whether a nearby electric field is suitable for flight and also visualises the electric field forces, allowing us humans to have the ability to master electric field flight!