Spider silk makes music at MIT

Pound for pound, spider silk is one of the strongest materials known: Research by MIT's Markus Buehler has helped explain that this strength arises from silk's unusual hierarchical arrangement of protein building blocks.

Now Buehler — together with David Kaplan of Tufts University and Joyce Wong of Boston University — has synthesized new variants on silk's natural structure, and found a method for making further improvements in the synthetic material.

And an ear for music, it turns out, might be a key to making those structural improvements.

Read more: http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/th...

Video: Melanie Gonick

Computer simulation with AAAB pattern or "More A": S. Rye and M. Buehler (video); E. Erenberg (flute), W. Kenlon (recording) and J. McDonald (composition; all three Tufts University).
Computer simulation with ABBB pattern or "More B": S. Rye and M. Buehler (video); E. Erenberg (flute), W. Kenlon (recording) and J. McDonald (composition; all three Tufts University).

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