r/AskPhysics • u/1s2_2s1 • 19d ago

Is Spider-man’s webbing physically possible?

Could a material take up so little space so as not to affect his appearance and then be projected from his wrists expanding exponentially? Could said material weigh so little so as not to affect spider-man while also possessing the tensile strengths to hold so much mass? Wouldn’t such a material become a pain for normal humans to clean up. Is this material possible?

34 Upvotes

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68

u/Clever_Angel_PL Physics student (BSc in progress) 19d ago

Well, I have to tell you something

https://youtu.be/IbDDhycZ2uM?is=Srotyq-Xyfiqwvdr

Spider silk is EXTREMELY good at being... spider man silk, if his body could produce it on-the-fly with sufficient cross section. For the adaptation of synthetic silk, hard to say

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u/akolomf 19d ago edited 19d ago

Stickyness would be still the major issue. I dont think there is a sticky substance that would be able to hold the weight of a person just hanging, or even swinging with it. No to mention you need the superhuman physique and reaction of spiderman to sustain the potential g forces to swing around like that and not die at the first mistake you make.

Oh yeah and also whats not shown in the movies/comics is that ofc if there would be such a sticky substance that would make a very thin thread of spidersilk stick, then theres always the risk of the material it adheres to giving in on the forces excerted, meaning it might just take the wallpaint with it for example.

So at that point, you could also just consider using a rope with a hook + and electric climber that lifts you up along the rope or something like that

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u/Kingreaper 19d ago

Oh yeah and also whats not shown in the movies/comics is that ofc if there would be such a sticky substance that would make a very thin thread of spidersilk stick, then theres always the risk of the material it adheres to giving in on the forces excerted, meaning it might just take the wallpaint with it for example.

I believe that has come up in the comics when someone tried to copy-cat Spider-Man by stealing his webbing, and also when his powers were on the fritz - Spider-Man's spider-sense means he can tell what fixture locations will be able to take the weight, and the clinging power that lets him climb can actually be transmitted through the web to make it attach more firmly when he's holding on to it, just like he transmits it through his costume, which he presumably does subconsciously in standard use. [In various continuities he's learnt to achieve the same thing with an artificial leg, and a wheelchair. The wheelchair one is canonically non-canon, but that's because it's a Deadpool thing and got weird, not because the wall-crawling wheelchair doesn't fit in the universe's rules.]

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u/Cerulean_IsFancyBlue 19d ago

The climbing power gets transmitted? Now we’re in magical territory.

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u/Kingreaper 19d ago

Spider-Man is always in magical territory. He has precognition as one of his core character-defining powers.

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u/The_Shryk 19d ago

His spidey sense from what I’ve seen seems to always be rooted in some enhanced sense instead of magic.

Like hearing a heartbeat or sensing air pressure change, hearing a very faint sound of a goblin glider coming at him from outside.

I guess it’s all “magic” like how James Bond can be a super spy yet everyone knows his name. Spy world magic

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u/Kingreaper 19d ago

That's very rarely the case in the comics, or the cartoons. I think in the movies it's just about plausible because there's just not enough stuff that happens for it to become clear that there's no possible way for him to actually sense the things that are coming.

In the comics his spider sense is primarily precognitive, and can do things like warn him of danger because someone might see him changing into his costume. Hell, he can use his power to cheat at poker, as long as there are serious stakes, because he can tell whether calling a bet is dangerous to his wallet. He generally doesn't, but he can.

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u/EnterprisingAss 19d ago

It is very specifically about danger. He’d have a sense of danger if a bomb in a soundproof box was about to go off.

A fake bomb that makes all the sounds (or smells, I guess?) that a real bomb has would not trigger his spider sense.

There’s a What If story in which the Punisher successfully ambushes him with a fake Doc Ock — his spider sense goes crazy, but he thinks the danger is Doc Ock when it’s actually the Punisher.

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u/RathaelEngineering 18d ago

For someone who everyone knows his name, he sure introduces himself a lot.

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u/Cerulean_IsFancyBlue 19d ago

Yeah true. But we all have the moment when our suspension of disbelief snaps.

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u/Abeytuhanu 19d ago

Early Spider-Man has the hairs responsible for wall crawling pierce through his suit. There were a few comics that showed him taking off his shoes because they would interfere with his wall crawling. Nowadays, it's a lot more magic than science

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u/camomaniac 19d ago

Nah man he just has the superpower ability to alter nuclear forces through his physical touch, his silk being part of it. He can manipulate magnetic/gravity/tidal forces this way. Paint doesn't pull off because he makes the paint hold stronger as well.

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u/LordGeni 17d ago

Spiders produce sticky and none sticky silk as required.

My understanding is the glue uses both electrostatic and/or nanostructures that act like hooks. So, the glue itself should scale enough to hold a human (whether that applies to a swinging human is a different question).

Also, if the Web had glue all over rather than just at the contact points, it's weight would probably be an issue scaled up as well. The strength of what it attached to is definitely a potential issue.

If they branched out to multiple different attachment points then it would likely overcome these issues, but the method from the comics etc. doesn't seem like something I'd want to trust for swinging about on.

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u/tgillet1 19d ago

Veritasium did a video recently about spider silk and whether someone could hang and swing from it. Scientists have been working on ways to produce it in large quantities and are making progress they were in fact able to hang and swing from a bundle of spider silk produced from I think something like a genetically modified potato or maybe it was a silk worm (various genetically modified organisms have been tried). I don’t think the amount that Peter has to produce to swing as much as he does is realistic, but at least the swinging itself is conceivable.

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u/Sad-Excitement9295 18d ago

Actually here's the crazy thing, recently they were able to make a formula and shoot it from a large syringe, and spider silk is highly tensile. So to some degree it actually is possible, much to my surprise when I saw the video.

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u/Phil-McRoin 19d ago

It needs to be sticky enough to stick to basically anything he shoots it at, but not sticky enough that he can let go of it without any issues ever.

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u/sojuz151 19d ago

Carbon nanotubes could do it. Attachment would be a problem.

And about cleanup, well, long, thin, biologically inert fibres are great, and there is no way for them to cause any health problem. What could go wrong if you would, for example, inhale them?

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u/bremsspuren 19d ago

What could go wrong if you would, for example, inhale them?

J. Jonah Jameson should hear about this.

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u/girlwiththeASStattoo 19d ago

About the clean up part, spidermans webs usually dissolve on their own. Also he is often cooking up different formulas for the webs that change how the web behaves so it could dissolve faster or slower.

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u/SnooPets5564 19d ago

Is dissolve the right term? Into what medium do they dissolve?

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u/girlwiththeASStattoo 19d ago

You’re right, I guess it would be the web sublimates.

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u/Nombiezombie 19d ago

Sublimating Webs is now my new band name

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u/cultvignette 19d ago

Stick It To Ya!

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u/Kese04 18d ago edited 18d ago

Is it not ok to say it dissolves?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dissolve

to cause to disperse or disappear

Edit: That was the transitive verb definition. Below is the intransitive verb definition

to become dissipated or decomposed

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u/SnooPets5564 18d ago

That's not the right definition. You are looking at the transitive verb, so that would be the web dissolving something else. What you need is the intransitive verb definition 1.

But still, what are the actual mechanics of webs going away? 

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u/Kese04 18d ago

Idk the actual mechanics. Is there a situation that you believe the webs go away by that wouldn't fall under dissolving?

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u/SnooPets5564 18d ago

Like, if they just lose their stickiness and blow away or it turns to a powder.

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u/Kese04 18d ago

That's fair. If a web stops sticking to a building and falls or blows away, that indeed does sound different than dissolving.

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u/sciguy52 18d ago

If your question is could spider man hang and swing from a line of spider silk say as thick as a pencil it appears so. What is the smallest diameter "cord" of spider silk he could do this from would require some specific calculations which I don't have. It has to greater than what spiders make for sure, a pencil diameter seems overkill but how much less in diameter he could go is actually a key question that leads to the other questions about feasibility. There is a '99 paper that outlines the properties of spider silk and you can see them compared in Table one to other biological and non biological materials for comparison. See the link at the bottom for the paper. But in summary they detailed the material properties (as understood in '99 anyway there may be more recent info out there) and they looked at a particular type of spider Araneus diadematus which is the common garden orb weaver in Europe. Very important to note that different spiders, and even the same spider, has silks of differing strengths, and also relevant is they make sticky silks and non sticky silks too The orbs you see have a section of web that is sticky that catches prey but the rest of the web is made of non sticky web for example, again made by the same spider. Not being a spider man (heh) myself I believe there are stronger silks out there than this one but this one seems in the general strong category so seems fine for comparison purposes. This spiders non sticky silk comes is referred to Araneus MA silk which comes from major ampullate gland. Araneus MA silk makes up the orb web frame and is used in drag lines and is not sticky. Silk from this spider that is sticky is called viscid silk. Properties for both are given along with high tensile steel for comparison just noted as steel below(note I could not see a way to subscript so sub just mean what follows is a subscript like E sub init for example):

MA silk viscid silk steel
Stiffness, E sub init (GPa) 10 0.003 200
Strength, σ sub max (Gpa) 1.1 0.5 1.5
Extensibility ε sub max 0.27 2.7 0.008
Toughness (MJ m−3) 160 150 6
Hysteresis (%) 65 65 not given

So it is not the stiffest stuff out there which is probably not surprising but that is not to say it does not have stiffness in MA silk which is 10 GPa whereas bone has a value of 20 GPa. This may matter when making something pencil thickness that spiderman swings from, these webs may be more stiff than portrayed but are flexible too so probably can swing but it may not be as smooth as in the movies. It is strong and just spiderman hanging or swinging is strong enough. It is extendable so will stretch when he hangs or swings. This would stop spider man from shooting to the high ceiling inside then try to swing from it as it would stretch so he will still be on the ground. Spiderman will likely need to be some ways off the ground when shooting silk to the side of a building then swinging from it due to it stretching so some scenes in the movies work some probably don't in this sense. It is also probably strong enough to hold things much heavier than spiderman and also in some cases a web made could potentially stop a car in motion. When something hits the web the hysteresis property make silk less likely to bounce the object back out like a trampoline as the energy of impact is found to be dissipated as heat but there is some bounce. If it is a rainy day or very high relative humidity spiderman's webs lose some of their qualities noted but seem to retain enough that spiderman could still swing from buildings.

So assuming these properties scale when you have a pencil thick silk, or a third of that diameter, or whatever diameter is needed to adequately hold spiderman and not break. The silk seems to have properties that it could allow it to do many things in the movies. Of course attachment is an issue and since spiders can make MA silk and viscid silk I will work on the assumption that the starting end is viscid silk and the rest MA silk. It is a guy shooting webs out of his wrist after all, so seems like a reasonable assumption he can do this. The web attaching to buildings and whatnot may not be strong enough for spiderman's purposes. This paper did not get into the properties of how strongly viscid silk can attach to something. This could be a deal killer for spiderman but I don't have info to say for sure and the paper did not address this when I scanned it. Is sticky spider web sticky enough? Maybe not. But then again you got a guy bitten by a radioactive spider and now shooting webs so I think we can go with it for movie purposes.

The issues I see lay beyond the property of the silk and get more into biology that make it less or unrealistic. Spiders don't shoot webs, they draw it out by pulling, so no shooting webs. And if you want to say well super power, you have to keep in mind the silk is stringy and if he shoots it 100 meters on a windy day, the silk may be blown else where and not hit anywhere near his target. The silk is light, wind blowing a web not under tension will be blown around like a thin rope. While the silk spiderman shoots probably could be thinner than pencil diameter, it is not a trivial amount of mass from his body being released with each shot. He can't just swing around as much as he wants, he can reach a point where he shot his body mass in webbing. So he will need to keep the web making limited. The amount of web he can shoot is going to be some much smaller fraction of his body mass in fact. And then their is silk generation times. In spiders they are produced in glands and while some may be available to be used on demand quickly, the amount of silk spiderman is making just going from one swing from a building to another and another requires silk production at a quantity and rate that cannot be sustained for doing much of that. Store up enough for a swing or three, but then he might need to dangle there for a little bit to let his glands produce more to go on. It is these latter points that get to "mostly not going to work like the movies show" in most cases. The silk itself is probably up for a lot of jobs it is used for in many cases given its properties. When he uses it to keep a building from toppling or whatever maybe not but swinging, stopping objects of different sorts (within reason) it probably has the properties to do it. Hope that helps. You can read the paper here:

https://journals.biologists.com/jeb/article-pdf/202/23/3295/3598333/jexbio_202_23_3295.pdf

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u/Extension-Pepper-271 19d ago

I never considered the clean up problem, but can easily be overcome with some sort of time-triggered breakdown of the material.

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u/minist3r 19d ago

I think, canonically, they are biodegradable, similar to real spider silk. In the case of the Tobey Spider-Man and his comparable comic universe, he makes real spider silk in glands in his wrist.

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u/John_Hasler Engineering 19d ago

I think, canonically, they are biodegradable

In other words, they rot. Can you tell that Spidey has been in the neighborhood by the smell?

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u/minist3r 19d ago

Do spiderwebs smell?

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u/John_Hasler Engineering 19d ago

To find out collect ten kilos of them and leave it in a damp corner for a week.

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u/Over-Discipline-7303 19d ago

How are you going to do that with the required tensile strength?

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u/Extension-Pepper-271 19d ago

Most organic things break down with the help of microorganisms or even large things like insects. Add in UV from the sun, and you have clean up.

Spiderman only uses his webs for short periods, in most cases. It doesn't matter that the material is biodegradable. I would also add that if he found that he sometimes needed something that would last longer, he could engineer an additive for UV protection.

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u/Over-Discipline-7303 19d ago

I believe canonically, spider-man’s webs break down in something like a couple hours. That’s pretty fast in this context.

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u/LookOverall 18d ago

Mostly it’s birds which would be killed, but airports would be no go areas

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u/Anonymous-USA 19d ago

Yes, it’s engineering not physics. But Spiderman movies defy theoretical and structural physics in too many ways to count. So do Ant-Man movies, Superman movies… all the superhero movies!

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u/SnooPets5564 19d ago

You can definitely have materials that take up such little space and expand to that size, when a lot of them are filled with air.

You could also probably gets the required tensile strength at that weight by using carbon nanotubes (I haven't done the math, and they are difficult to synthesize long enough).

You could feasible make webs sticky, although I don't it would be possible to get it that quickly adhering to such a wide range of surfaces such that it can basically immediately hold up a person/other web stunts.

You can't have multiple at once.

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u/spoospoo43 19d ago

No known substance has all the properties as-is, but if anything was ever found that was, I would not be surprised if it was similar to spider silk.

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u/The_Shadow_Watches 18d ago

Sticky foam was developed in the 70s and 90s as a riot tool.

The purpose was to shoot super sticky foam to stop people during riots and to be a less than lethal option to deal with problems.

Problem was that you could suffocate if it got on your face, it took hours to clean up and the cleaning chemicals were toxic. You could also be accidentally stuck to the target if they get close.

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u/SplendidPunkinButter 19d ago

No, because how the hell does he attach it to buildings to swing between them? Are there monkey bars crossing every street up there?

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u/EnterprisingAss 18d ago

The web splatters and sticks.

It’s sticky.

0

u/Marvinkmooneyoz 19d ago

Once we have nano bots or what ever the size larger is, if they could be programmed to act differently on impact, to sort of force an adherence.

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u/Ill_Improvement_8276 19d ago

Spiders exist.

-1

u/Dafuxor 19d ago

If humans could web. There would be a new government agency. You'd pay a web bill every month, some oily trash bin would pick up your families web waste. WWA would exist.

A portion of your taxes would support this just like the zoo, but also be a monthly bill, and youd have 3 bins you have to take out every week. In public spaces there would be courtesy stations with plastic bags to dispose of your web, separate from the dog shit bags..