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Answer

Stumper #37

  1. Spider webs have been used to dress wounds.
    True but this has a tendency to introduce infection.
  2. Spider silk has been used to make 'silk' thread and has been woven into fabric for clothing.
    True but the fabric is somewhat transparent even when several layers are worn.
    Queen Victoria of England was given a spider silk gown by a Chinese delgation in 1876.
  3. Spider silk is stronger, weight for weight, than steel or Kevlar.
    True
  4. Spider silk is being used to make hollow optical fibers for nanoscale optical circuits.
    True. Spider silk may be about to solve a major problem in photonics: how to make hollow optical fibres narrow enough to carry light beams around the fastest nanoscale optical circuits. A team of engineers from the University of California at Riverside has produced such hollow tubes by giving threads of spider silk thread a glassy coating, and then extracting the silk by baking.
More information about spiders:
1. www.explorit.org/science/spider.html
2. The Book of Spiders by Paul Hillyard, Avon Books, New York. 1994 ISBN: 0-380-73075-8

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