27 February 2007

Gecko Magic



Geckos are a type of lizard, that tend to be small, active at night, and have a short stout body with a large head. They can survive anywhere from house to jungles to deserts. They are common throughout India including Tiruvannamalai. To hear the clicking noises the Gecko occasionally makes is regarded as very good luck.

A gecko has four feet. Each foot has about half-a-million tiny hairs at its end. To give you an idea of how small the hairs are, a human hair is about 70 microns across compared to a hair on the end of a gecko's foot which is approximately 7 microns across, and 30-130 microns long. If you examine each one of these tiny hairs with an electron microscope, you'll see that each have several hundred smaller hairs coming of them; each one being about 0.2-0.5 microns across and called 'spatulae'.

Geckos stick to the surface they are on, thanks to atomic forces called "Van Der Waals Forces", named after a 19th century Dutch physicist who first described them. The hairs on a Gecko's foot are so minute that they stick to the surface (be it a ceiling or wall) by direct atomic or molecular force. In effect the Gecko becomes physically bonded to the object he is on. Apparently if a tiny Gecko had every one of its spatulae in contact with a surface, it would be capable of holding aloft a 120kg weight.

I believe something similar happens to us at Arunachala. And as it permeates our being, we literally bond to it on a sub atomic level in every aspect of our body-mind organism.

1 comment:

Divyakka said...

Haha I did not expect that last spiritual insight at the end of the interesting Gecko info!