image: This is a darkfield microscope image of an extracted fiber ribbon stained with toluidine blue. The discovery of cucumber tendril overwinding and its mechanical consequences hints at the possibility of designing biomimetic twistless springs with tunable mechanical behavior. This image relates to a paper that appeared in the Aug. 31, 2012, issue of Science, published by AAAS. The paper, by S.J. Gerbode at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., and colleagues was titled, "How the Cucumber Tendril Coils and Overwinds." view more
Credit: Image courtesy of Joshua Puzey