Just back from a very interesting working meeting with my friends Sara and Charles. We are working on a paper Do you document it very interesting project the three of us did several years back. The project began as a tribute to Sara’s Mentor Herb and his wife Florida. Herb had recently died after a long and productive life. His wife Lauren Ohm died within 12 days. The two of them had spent their entire lives studying and drawing spiders. They were some of the worlds most renowned arachnologists.

Sarah was looking for a fitting tribute to these wonderful people. So the public can send them off at a memorial service.She called me to brainstorm. She wanted to make some sort of tribute that related to the spiders that Herb and Lorna loved. Through a very funny and complicated process we decided to make models of the spiders stribulating organs… These are the device is the spider uses to make sounds to attract a mate. Our idea was to take models of the spiders Stribulating organs Then blow them up and make them into a mold where we could cast Some sort of edible candy. .. we settled on caramel .. The guests at the memorial service good then stroke that shaped candy to make the sounds of spiders as a tribute to herb and Lorna

The story of how this worked out is pretty funny. With our help Sara used Several high-tech imaging devices including micro CT, scanning electron microscope’s, and focal plane microscopes to get an image of the spiders topography. Then we used some artistic license to create a mold. She then reached out to the presidential pastry chef in the White House for a caramel recipe. And the night before the memorial service she successfully cast several spider inspired edible musical instruments… Those were played at the memorial service

Crazy huh?…

But it doesn’t stop there. In the course of trying to analyze the data derived From the spider parts, Charles was able to create a completely new biological imaging system that allowed even complex models like the micro CT of the spider to be displayed efficiently on something as small as a mobile phone.

You never know where the spiders web leads…

I’ll share the article when it’s ready to publish. It’s certainly stranger than fiction

nite all, nite Sam

-me