In the creeping plant's tendrils, researchers discover a biological mechanism for coiling and stumble upon an unusual type of spring
Cambridge, Mass. - August 30, 2012 – Captivated by a strange coiling behavior in the grasping tendrils of the cucumber plant, researchers at Harvard University have characterized a new type of spring that is soft when pulled gently and stiff when pulled strongly.
Instead of unwinding to a flat ribbon under stress, as an untwisted coil normally would, the cucumber's tendrils actually coil further. Understanding this counterintuitive behavior required a combination of head scratching, physical modeling, mathematical modeling, and cell biology—not to mention a large quantity of silicone.
The result, published in the August 31 issue of Science, describes the mechanism by which coiling occurs in the cucumber plant and suggests a new type of bio-inspired twistless spring.
Led by principal investigator L. Mahadevan, Lola England de Valpine Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Professor of Physics at Harvard, and a Core Faculty Member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard, the researchers were motivated by simple curiosity about the natural world.
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