Silk: Stronger Than You Think

19 Silk: Stronger Than You Think Silk. It's soft and smooth. It's cool in summer and warm in winter. It's pretty and comfortable to wear. Long ago, only rich people could afford silk. It was discovered by the Chinese thousands of years ago. Soon, worldwide trade of this precious fabric developed. Over the years, it has made many people very rich. But silk is no longer just a pretty fabric. Today, scientists are discovering many exciting things about silk. For example, silk is so strong that researchers believe it can be used to make bulletproof vests. In fact, silk is stronger than steel. A three-centimetre strand of silk is strong enough to raise a jet into the air and hold it there. But there's a problem. It's difficult to get enough natural silk for mass production. The silk worm makes about 700 metres of silk when it spins its cocoon. That might seem like a lot, but imagine how many cocoons it takes to spin a long, thick cord.

Scientists are studying the silk spun by spiders as an alternative to that of the silk worm. It's strong too. But the problem is figuring out how to get enough of it to make it useful. Spiders don't like to live near other spiders. They fight each other if there are too many in one place. This makes it difficult to raise spiders together and harvest their silk. This is why scientists are experimenting by adding special genes to some animals to see what happens. They put a silk gene in goats and found that their milk has a certain amount of silk in it. Still, it would take more than 1, 200 litres of this milk to make enough silk for one bulletproof vest. That's a lot of milk! Ants and bees also produce silk. This is also being studied. But the problem remains-how can you get enough silk for mass production of useful products other than fabrics? By the way, did you know that sleeping on a silk pillow is supposed to slow down the development of wrinkles on your face as you age? It's the amino acids in the silk.