Density of Spider Silk
In order to measure the density of a material, we normally want to know its mass and volume. We can use some imaging software to obtain spider silk’s volume by measuring its diameter and length; however, it is very difficult to obtain its mass. As a result, we needed to obtain density from another method.
As a reference, we used a master thesis from Mr. Mark J. Bonino. In Bonino’s thesis, he made a graph of stress vs. strain in terms of MPa and %. The area under this curve gives the breaking energy in energy per volume. Bonino also gives a table of breaking energy in energy per mass. The ratio of these yields the density. Using Bonino’s sample number 092200 , we have come up the density of spider silk of 1.097 g/ccol-md-3.
At this point, the spider silk’s density is only obtained by this thesis and we see there is a need for us to find another independent source to verify this measurement.
