Best videos of 2012: Spiderman skin stops a bullet

Joanna Carver, reporter

This bullet-dodging hybrid skin comes in at number 4 in our best videos of 2012 countdown.

Imagine facing a speeding bullet without fear of it tearing through your flesh. By reinforcing human skin cells with spider silk, artist Jalila Essa?di has designed a futuristic material that could make this scenario plausible.

Spider-silk weaves are actually four times stronger than Kevlar, which explains why a half-speed bullet can't penetrate the hybrid skin in the video. However, when it meets a full-speed bullet, traveling at 329 metres per second, it's unable to stop it.

To find out more about the many applications of super-sturdy spider silk, read our full-length feature "Stretching spider silk to its high-tech limits". For more about Essa?di's project, check out our original post, "Bulletproof skin stops a speeding gunshot".

Source: http://feeds.newscientist.com/c/749/f/10897/s/26fba613/l/0L0Snewscientist0N0Cblogs0Cnstv0C20A120C120Cbest0Evideos0Eof0E20A120Ebulletproof0Eskin0Bhtml0Dcmpid0FRSS0QNSNS0Q20A120EGLOBAL0Qonline0Enews/story01.htm

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