{"id":221303,"date":"2025-09-02T08:12:41","date_gmt":"2025-09-02T13:12:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/snap-through-effect-helps-engineers-solve-soft-material-motion-trade-off"},"modified":"2025-09-02T08:12:41","modified_gmt":"2025-09-02T13:12:41","slug":"snap-through-effect-helps-engineers-solve-soft-material-motion-trade-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/snap-through-effect-helps-engineers-solve-soft-material-motion-trade-off","title":{"rendered":"Snap-through effect helps engineers solve soft material motion trade-off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/snap-through-effect-helps-engineers-solve-soft-material-motion-trade-off3.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Everyday occurrences like snapping hair clips or clicking retractable pens feature a mechanical phenomenon known as \u201csnap-through.\u201d Small insects and plants like the Venus flytrap cleverly use this snap-through effect to amplify their limited physical force, rapidly releasing stored elastic energy for swift, powerful movements.<\/p>\n<p>Inspired by this <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/natural+mechanism\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">natural mechanism<\/a>, researchers from Hanyang University have developed a polymer-based jumper capable of both vertical and directional leaps, triggered simply by uniform ultraviolet (UV) light irradiation.<\/p>\n<p>Published in <i>Science Advances<\/i>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.science.org\/doi\/10.1126\/sciadv.adx8301\" target=\"_blank\">this study<\/a> tackles a classic engineering dilemma: how to make <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/soft+materials\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">soft materials<\/a> produce strong, rapid motions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Everyday occurrences like snapping hair clips or clicking retractable pens feature a mechanical phenomenon known as \u201csnap-through.\u201d Small insects and plants like the Venus flytrap cleverly use this snap-through effect to amplify their limited physical force, rapidly releasing stored elastic energy for swift, powerful movements. Inspired by this natural mechanism, researchers from Hanyang University have [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":732,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1497,38,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy","category-engineering","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/732"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221303\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}