10 Scientific Secrets Of Spider-Man Only Geeks Will Love

10. Spider-Man’s Early Tech Was Cool But Hardly Cutting Edge

From the very beginning, Stan Lee and Steve Ditko portrayed Peter Parker as an intelligent young man with a love for science. After the spider bite, Peter realized that Spider-Man was nothing without “webs.” To this end, Parker created twin wrist-worn web-shooting devices of his own design.

The spinnerets mechanisms on the web shooters are stainless steel with Teflon turbines, and the two turbine bearings are made from amber and artificial sapphire. For the cartridges that hold the web fluid, they're made from nickel-plated brass, with the nozzles being stainless steel with brass caps tightly wedged in the top. Where the shooters are concerned, they're activated by a palm trigger attached to a stainless steel band that requires a double tap from Spidey’s super strong fingers and 65 lbs (29.5 kg) of pressure to avoid misfires.

Spider-Man’s web fluid is a substance that Peter designed himself when he was a teenager. The fluid is a shear-thinning liquid similar to nylon that is nearly solid until it comes in contact with air, and the long-chain polymers knit together to become as strong as steel. Over time, the polymers break down and, in about an hour, dissolve into powder. In The Spectacular Spider-Man Annual #7, Thomas Fireheart, aka the villainous Puma, employed a whole group of scientists to recreate the web fluid - and of course they failed to adequately do so.