title: Spider silk violin strings with a unique packing structure generate a soft and profound timbre.
abstract: We overcome the difficulties in pulling long draglines from spiders, twist bundles of dragline filaments, and succeed in preparing violin strings. The twisting is found to change the cross section shapes of filaments from circular to polygonal and to optimize the packing structure with no openings among filaments providing mechanically strong and elastic strings. The spider string signal peaks of overtones for the violin are relatively large at high frequencies, generating a soft and profound timbre. Such a preferable timbre is considered to be due to the unique polygonal packing structure which provides valuable knowledge for developing new types of materials.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Nara Medical University, Kashihara, Nara 634-8521, Japan.
authors.forename: Shigeyoshi
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Osaki
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001696:Biomechanical Phenomena; D009146:Music; D047011:Silk / Q000737:chemistry*; D013112:Spiders / Q000737:chemistry*; D014732:Vibration
chemical_list: D047011:Silk