Introduction The Rainforest Project is a project focused on educating students through a non-profit program lead by Formans, Wendy Welshans,

founded in 1991. Through this project the research done helps slow deforestation and increases the populations knowledge of slashing and burning down rainforests. There are a group of 12-15 students brought together and divided up into specific groups based on their skill and ability to work together. Those groups are spider silk, reptiles and amphibians, ortho odo, moths, and birds. Once assigned a group those teams start unique research on their specific group. This class goes far beyond the work of just a classroom setting, the students work with teachers from outside Forman and travel to Costa Rica for 2 weeks in March. The improvements in the students that participate in this course are incomparable. Their skills in so many areas are remarkably improved and the outcome is beyond beneficial. This is the 20th year of the Forman school rainforest project and the ?? year of the Forman school rainforest projects arachnid project also known as the spider silk project. The arachnid projects focus is on the Nephila Clavipes, the golden orb weaver, offers potential scientific wisdom which opens new doors to innovate change around the world. The reason for this is because of this spiders silk, which is the strongest natural fiber in the world. Since this silk has such unique characteristics how the silk can be used can benefit future generations and continue to be a guiding in scientific innovations. The arachnid project in the past has focused on the research on one member of the order Araneae. The Nephila Clavipes is found in the southeastern most portion of the United States and in South America. Usually in this species of spider the females have a range of 24mm to 40mm and the females are 5 to 6 times larger than males. Despite this spider that can fit in your palm this spiders silk is, oz. per oz., six times the tensile strength of steel. The strongest type of silk they produce is the spiders dragline silk, this is used for the outer ring and the spokes of the web. Also the silk has been shown to stretch up to 140% of its original length and is almost weightless. All of these characteristics combine to create a flexible, yet super strong material. Such a natural material seems to be unfathomable and is part of the reason why our research is viewed as revolutionary. The spider silk project started off as an attempt to use the silk of the golden orb weaver to create an ultra strong reinforcing fiber. This never caught on for large-scale production because of the cost and how difficult it is to keep a large number in captivity. After a few years of trial and error the spider silk team has finally gotten its project in to the air. The teams

started off using large wheels to collect the silk on and this worked well but it took a lot of effort to cut the silk in to pieces and also the fact that it takes 3 people to operate. Recently though the teams have built new wheels to collect silk on that are more accurate and require only 2 people to run. This is the wheel we are planning on using this year. The big hope of the spider team was to create a cheaper reinforcing fabric that has spider silk built in. This did not go amazingly because the silk took a long time to collect and it couldnt be collected in mass amounts. We have turned to the medical industry in recent years because the silk is natural and can be used as sutures. Another reason spider silk is ideal is because a human body wont reject it. The process of silk extraction requires precise and cautious steps to receive a finished product of silk. To start the person must obtain the spider from its web by carefully cupping hands around the spider and gently pulling it off the web. After obtaining the spider from its web the person must place the spider onto one of the spokes of the wheel in order for the spider to naturally lay its sticky disk. When the spider is done laying its sticky disk help the spider to relax into its new habitat by letting it walk along the hand. While this person is occupying the spider by letting it walk along its hand a second person needs to turn the wheel and pay close attention to the wheel. The second persons job is also responsible for the tally counter to pay attention to each rotation. In order for this procedure to maintain success the person handling the spider should go by certain techniques. These techniques include keeping the spiders abdomen up, move hand over hand and keep a downward angle for the spider to move. After the spider has finished producing silk, the person handling the spider should bring it back to its web. However this is only in the case that the spider has produced more than 1-2 rotations. If this is not the case, the person handling the spider should help the spider back onto the spoke in order for a re-try at producing silk. Once this is done, the person with the tally counter must record his or her information on a data sheet. Another spider may be added for spider silk extraction without removing the silk already obtained on the wheel. The most amounts of spiders that can accompany the wheel with their spider silk still attached are only 3-4. An important factor to take into is the placement of the spider on the wheel. The spider should be placed at the beginning of the spoke, so that it wont get caught on the wheel. The steps in the procedure of extracting spider silk it tedious and extremely important to the outcome of data. Hypothesis

The goal of our research is to find out what effects the strength and the color of the spider silk. In the past teams have determined that there is a correlation between the weather and the strength and elasticity of the silk. We want to find out the reason for this and the predictability of the silk. If we can find these factors out we will be able to present our findings to a larger audience of companies. (A company looking for a stronger but less elastic silk should take the silk during a certain time frame but another looking for a more elastic but weaker silk should get silk from another time frame) Equipment Spider collection jars Stopwatches 3 backlights 4 tally counters Calculator Silk Books Spider Wheels Method In order to accomplish our hypothesis certain procedures need to be carried out. The variables effecting our goal, include temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed, wind direction, rainfall, lumen/lux, and due points. After we extract, silk from the Nephilias spiders we will use the weather station and light meter to analyze the results. After we do this we will compare our data to the results of the extracted spider silk and narrow down which factor affects the silk strength and color the most. Outside collection This year we will be visiting 2 farms that will be collecting silk for us. They will be collecting for 7 days and be paid $20 a day. One of these farms we have been going to for a few years now and provides very consistent and well documented silk. The silk they collect are of or above our standards. The other farm is a new one that we have not visited before. We will be approaching this seconded farm cautiously because we dont know weather they will provide as consistent data or silk.