Page 157 - Engineering in Nature

Harun Yahya

around half a million hairs.
Every single hair consists of between 400 and 1,000 protrusions, all
located in such a way as to face the animal's heels. The tip of each one
is about 5,000th of a millimeter thick. The millions of microscopic tips
on the gecko's feet use the gravitational force of the atoms in the sur-
face it walks on to firmly adhere to that surface.
As the gecko walks, it places the soles of its feet on the surface and
pulls them slightly backwards, ensuring maximum contact between
the hairs and the surface. Its hairs cling tightly to microscopic protru-
sions and cavities on the surface, too small to be seen with the naked
eye. Thus on the molecular level, a slight gravitational attraction
forms between the foot and the surface, known as the Van der Waals
Force in quantum physics. 47

Adnan Oktar
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