Thursday, September 4, 2014

Scientists Study Biomechanics Behind Amazing Ant Strength


Researchers at The Ohio State University created on Ohio Supercomputer Center systems a 3-D model of an ant to study the biomechanical properties of the neck joint. 
Castro/OSU

6 comments:

Lily said...

I think that it was really cool that the way the Allegheny mound ant carried all of the weight, just because of the single joint of the neck. It was very smart that they reverse engineered the biomechanics so that they could see what the structure was inside of the ant. I can't believe that they found so many elements in the ant. Even though we don't know a lot about the relation between the mechanical function and the structure of the ant, I think we will learn more about it and apply it to an invention that is very small but can carry a large amount of weight.

g said...

I think that it is amazing that a little creature like an ant, who is barely, actually, probably not even a centimeter long, can be made into a large model to be studied. It is insane that science has made developments this far, and that people are able to study things so small, and turn it into something so big.

Grace said...

Sorry, meant to be Grace, not g. :)

Justin Y said...

I think that this article is really awesome the way the Allegheny mound ant could carry a very large amount of weight only because it had a certain joint in its neck. I think it was interesting how they could see the structure of the ant and of how many elements they had found. I agree with Lily sooooooo much because I think this could be used with Biomimicry to create a product that could carry much more than it weighed

Julianna said...

I believe that this article was very fascinating! I can not believe that the Allegheny mound ant could carry a lot of weight on its tiny neck. It is cool how there is a little joint in the ant's neck that is very strong. You would never think that an ant could hold that much weight (unless you read an article like this one)!

Jason said...

I think that this article was very informative. I learned that the neck of the ant is what really supports all of the weight. Although, I do not understand how the neck could be so small, yet be able to carry so much weight. I also really enjoyed learning about a creature who is so small, yet such a big fascination to scientists. Most of the time, people do not really think about ants and their structure. As soon as they see an ant, they'll probably kill it. I believe that one of the things that really brought this article together was the topic. My dad and I have wondered about this for years (we even tried to dissect a one) (I said tried). We have always been wondering about this.