I'm a Junior high school student and we have this investigatory project in our school. Ours is about spider silk, and our main problem is how to measure the elongation limit and breaking point of spider silk. I found this study made way back in 1976 [http://biomimetic.pbworks.com/f/THE+PHYSICAL+PROPERTIES+OF+SPIDER'SDENNY.pdf]. The author made a crude machine to measure these characteristics, but I think there is no way we students could afford an LVDT or capstan or whatnot. Does anyone know how to make a crude version of this machine, or any different method to measure the elongation limit and breaking point? Thank you very much!

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[http://biomimetic.pbworks.com/f/THE+...39;SDENNY.pdf].

 

Oops! This link appears to be broken.

 

found it: http://biomimetic.pbworks.com/f/THE+PHYSICAL+PROPERTIES+OF+SPIDER'SDENNY.pdf

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Use fig 13 b & c from page 502, increasing the weight and measuring deformation. For more accuracy & efficiency, you can use more than one silk, and divide the results afterwards.

Thank you so much, michel123456!