How Much Does Spider Silk Weight?

Spider silk is very strong, durable and tough. This fiber can be used for many different applications, including ballistic protection, wrapping prey, building a web and for temporary scaffolding. Depending on its molecular weight, spider silk can handle loads up to hundreds of times its own weight.

One of the most well-known uses for spider silk is in making intricately designed webs. However, these delicate structures are not created by all species of spiders. Some species coat their webs with sex pheromones to attract mates. Others use silk from older webs.

Spiders make their webs from thousands of nanostrands. Each of these nanostrands is twenty millionths of a millimeter in diameter. This means that each strand is stronger than a beam of steel.

Although it is very strong, spider silk is significantly thinner than human hair. Spiders can stretch the length of their silk four times before breaking. The amount of force needed to break a single strand is 16.3 milliNewtons.

Silk is also much thinner than steel. An ordinary grade of silk weighs between three and five dollars per yard. It ranges in quality from cheap silk that is a fraction of an ounce to rich silk that is two ounces.

There are seven different types of silk produced by spiders. Some species produce as many as eight. Some, like the flagelliform and aciniform silk, are stickier than others.

Scientists study spider silk because it has distinct physical properties. The tensile strength of spider silk is measured in newtons per square meter.