Slowly but surely, we are making good on the gadgets we imagined, as kids, that the future would hold. Penny Brown’s video watch from Inspector Gadget? Check. The Starfleet tricoder from Star Trek? Almost there. But web-shooting? Web-slinging? That wasn’t one we really thought would make the crossover. And it wasn’t exactly in the plans for the scientist who has made the strong, sticky, air-spun web a reality either, Marco Lo Presti, from Tufts University’s Silklab.
Back in 2020, Lo Presti, a research assistant professor in biomedical engineering, was working on the challenge of underwater adhesives. The first material he chose to work on was made up of silk and