Figure 1 A gecko can walk upside-down on a ceiling, supporting its own weight using its sticky feet
The terms in bold link to topics in the AQA, Edexcel, OCR, WJEC and CCEA A-level specifications, as well as the IB, Pre-U and SQA exam specifications.
Attraction between surfaces results from van der Waals forces between molecules. A simple mathematical model describes how the energy of interaction depends on distance between a small object and a surface, leading to an equation for force and an estimate of the pressure exerted by a gecko’s foot.
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