Testing Spider Silk to See If It’s Stronger Than Steel

Henry van Dyck of Veritasium investigated the remarkable tensile strength and elasticity of spider silk to see if it was stronger than steel. He visited The Blackledge Lab at the University of Akron, where he tested garden spider silk without harming the spiders and compared it with silk from a Darwin’s Bark Spider, whose silk is the toughest known biomaterial. The video also covered the complex protein structure of silk and the challenges scientists face in farming spiders or replicating their silk fibers.

Real spider silk, the fiber that makes up a spider’s web…It’s reportedly stronger than steel. It’s pretty strong. …And 10 times tougher than Kevlar.

Van Dyck also visited Kraig Biocraft Laboratories, where he observed the company’s recombinant (engineered) spider silk operations. He later dared Derek Muller to swing from the material like Spider-Man at a local climbing gym.

Can you really swing from spider silk?

Darwin’s Bark Spider