Jakarta –
Children have a million questions, sometimes more critical than those of us who are even more mature. Often times, his curiosity can make us wrinkle our foreheads, trying to answer even though sometimes there are doubts. One of them might be this: whether germs and other microscopic creatures on the floor will sweep when we step foot?
If you stepped on something, say a banana or chocolate, they would obviously flatten out, sticking to the floor. However, if what is stepped on is lego, it will remain firm — instead, our feet are in pain.
Launch IFL Science, when you step on an object, you apply pressure that comes from the weight of the body. Mainly from the area where the force is distributed in the leg. You can calculate pressure by dividing the weight of an object by its area.
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If your feet are approximately 7 inches (18 cm) long and 4 inches (10 cm) wide, their surface area is 28 square inches (180 square cm). Furthermore, if you weigh 50 kilograms, the force you exert per square inch is approximately 1.7 kg per square inch.
Bacteria, they have different shapes. Some are in the form of balls, spirals, to rods. Bacterial cells have a wall that protects the inside. The question is, how strong is the wall?
Scientists have studied the strength of the bacterial walls using a variety of tools. A 1985 study found that it takes nearly 1,500 pounds (680 kg) per square inch for Salmonella bacteria to explode. Later experiments showed that it takes about 1,900 pounds (861 kg) per square inch for the common soil bacterium Bacillus subtilis to explode.
To understand these numbers, imagine a large bacterium. If it had the same cell wall strength as Salmonella, it could support more than 350 people weighing 50 kg each standing on it at the same time.
So, can germs get stuck when stepped on?
From the explanation above, it is clear that a bacteria have extraordinarily strong cells. But there is one thing that is the biggest advantage, namely the size itself. Bacteria are very small, between 1-5 microns. For comparison, the tip of an ordinary tack is about 130 microns in diameter.
The surface of your skin has fine indentations called sulci cutis which are tens of microns on average. Also, the soles of the shoes you wear also have much deeper indentations than those on the skin. Therefore, bacteria have a chance to escape, whether you step on it with bare feet or bare feet.
But if you are really obsessed with destroying those little bacteria, there is one tip you can do. One theoretical way is to change the bottom of your shoe from flat to very pointed, with the bottom toe having the diameter of the tip of a tack. Although walking in these shoes would be impossible, a 50 kg person would exert 5.6 million pounds per square inch of pressure. That’s enough to destroy some bacteria.
In conclusion, bacteria turns out to be difficult to destroy when we step. They can escape from the pressure and get into the smooth grooves of the skin.
Although humans find it difficult to pin germs with footsteps, it turns out that some insects can do it. Cicada wings have tiny molecular structures that look like needles. These needle-like structures are only nanometers in size, a thousand times smaller than most bacteria, and are called nanorods.
When bacteria land on the surface of a cicada’s wing, it makes a special chemical that helps it stick to the surface. When a bacterium divides, it generates a small force that allows the new cells to separate from one another. This small force magnifies into enormous pressure as they push the nanorods in the cicada’s wings, piercing the bacteria and killing it.
Watch Video “5 Scientific Phenomena That Have Been Explained in the Qur’an”
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2023-07-04 00:45:48
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