Geckos got Vans; How to Defeat your Friendly Neighborhood Nemesis Using Van der Waals Forces.

The secret to being a good supervillain is to counter your nemeses. Figure out who you’ll be fighting and plan ahead. Whose territory are you in? What if they don’t happen to have some kryptonite plot device? Doesn’t matter! Just use the power of SCIENCE! Of course, you’ll still never beat them. But you can at least slow them down or put their side kick out of commission or something.

For this evil scheme I was in Manhattan, the territory of Gecko-Girl. Specifically, I was gonna throw toilet paper all over Wall Street. ‘Cause fuck ‘em. Y’know? Yeah. Fuck ‘em. Alsop it’s also part of an elaborate pump and dump scheme. I’ve just bought a shit ton of Charmin stock and it’s going to space after this news story hits, hopefully. 

Gecko-Girl was bitten by a radioactive gecko and, instead of getting cancer or something, does whatever a gecko can. But she also has the weaknesses of a gecko!

Gecko Van der Waals Forces

Geckos are a type of lizard. You might have heard they can climb walls, but did you ever wonder how? They aren’t sticky and they don’t leave behind any kind of residue. They exploit a quirk of physics known as the Van der Waals force.

Static Charge and Polarization

Electrons and protons are attracted to each other because one is negatively charged and the other positively charged. Likewise, electrons are repelled from other electrons because they have the same charge. If you’re asking how all that works, then don’t because the answer is quantum physics voodoo. 

Most things have equal amounts of electrons and protons, so their charges cancel out creating a neutral charge. But if an object has more electrons than protons, such as a statically charged balloon, it will have a net negative charge. Or vice versa.

Just like a magnet, like charges repel each other. So an object with a net negative charge, such as a statically charged balloon, will push away the negatively charged electrons in nearby neutral objects, such as a wall. By pushing the electrons away, a region of protons on the wall is left exposed with a net positive charge. Hence, attraction is created from repulsion and the negative balloon is attracted to and sticks to the positive wall. This is called polarization.

Well, that sort of thing also happens at the scale of single atoms and molecules.

Van der Waals “Forces”

The Van der Waals “force” is a combination of several other forces, which themselves are also just emergent properties of the true fundamental forces.

The London Dispersion Force (LDS) happens when the electron orbitals of nearby atoms repel and disperse each other caused by random fluctuations. ¹ My editor didn’t understand this. Unfortunately, neither do I. Its more quantum physics voodoo. This disturbance causes the atom to form a very slight magnetic dipole. These dipoles, like everyday magnets, attract each other. Paradoxically creating attraction from repulsion. This is most effective in neutrally charged molecules with lots of electrons, such as hydrocarbons or diatomic iodine.

The Debye Force is similar to LDS with the exception that instead of two neutral atoms, it’s one permanent dipole molecule polarizing a neutral molecule or atom. This is essentially the same as the statically charged balloon sticking to the wall. Just, y’know, very tiny.

The Keesom Force is the most straightforward. It is caused between two molecules that are permanent dipoles. I don’t think we need any further explanation as to why they would be attracted to each other.

Gecko-Girl Feet

Van der Waals forces are very short ranged. The threshold differs for each of the contributing forces and varies based on materials, but is generally on the scale that you’d need an electron microscope to see. Even something that looks extremely smooth, such as window glass, actually has microscopic bumps that stop most of the material from getting into Van der Waals range. 

This is why normal humans can’t climb walls like a gecko, the surface of your finger is just too rough. The texture of your fingertip prevents enough keratin from coming close enough for Van der Waals forces to be noticeable.  

So if I can’t climb a wall because it isn’t smooth enough, then what if it was? Shouldn’t Van der Waals forces work between perfectly smooth surfaces? Yes! This contributes to a phenomenon known as gauge block wringing or cold welding. 

Geckos solve this range issue by covering their feet in lots of microscopic hairs called setae that are small enough to fit into every microscopic nook and cranny of nearly any surface, thus maximizing the surface area in contact with a surface. 

Each seta can support about 20mg of weight, which might not seem like a lot until you realize that it comes entirely from Van der Waals forces and each is thinner than a human hair! These hairs are made of beta-keratin (not to be confused with beta-carotene) which is like the alpha-keratin our hair, skin, and fingernails are made of but better. Unfortunately it’s a reptile/bird exclusive feature. Unless you have bullshit gecko powers, anyways.

The shape of the setae is designed so they stick when pushed downwards, but when the gecko moves their foot forwards the setae are each peeled away easily.

Apparently, Geckos can support about 300 pounds of weight using their foot pads. I’m not sure how that was determined as I doubt the gecko itself could support that much. Gecko-Girl could probably support more than that given her feet are bigger and thus have more setae than a gecko’s.

Turns out that Van der Waal forces generally don’t work very well while wet, as the polar water molecules interfere and stick to all the dipoles. It also doesn’t work on teflon, as teflon is nonstick specifically because it’s immune to Van der Waals forces through the magic of fluorine spam (and cancer.) Teflon is covered in fluorine atoms which have such an insanely strong charge that they’re too busy being attracted to each other to be attracted to anything else.

Gecko-Girl’s One Weakness

So how can I exploit Gecko-Girl’s Van der Waals force feet for EVIL? So I just waited until it was raining to commit my evil scheme! MWAHAHA!

Then one of my minions, Allenzander, said “Boss! Da toilet paper getting wet ‘cause of da rain.”

“Yes, and it will dissolve into a paste making it WAY HARDER TO CLEAN! MWAHAHAHA!”

“No, boss, da rolls are soaking up all da water and falling apart as we throw ‘em! This ain’t workin’!”

“Oh, right. Should have thought of that sooner, huh? Oh well, I guess instead we’ll just have to shoot everybody.” I shrugged, pulling a raygun out of my lab coat.

Then Gecko-Girl showed up out of nowhere, having changed colors to blend in with the surrounding brick walls! Oh, yeah, geckos can also change color to blend in with their surroundings. ²It’s not just chameleons who do that. In fact, unlike geckos, chameleons don’t change color for camouflage. They change color purely for mating displays and shit. Chameleons are kinda just worse geckos. I forgot about that.

“Hi there! It’s ya friendly neighborhood Gecko-Girl!”

Gecko-Girl spat her long creepy tongue at Allenzander, wrapping it over a lamppost and around his neck. She pulled upward, smashing his head into the glass dome. He fell to the ground with electrical burns and a severe skull fracture. 

“Ooh! TP! You nerds having a bit of trouble? What? You had no life in highschool so you have no experience with this?” She chortled.

“YOU DARE QUIP AT ME, REPTILE?” I leveled my raygun at her and took a shot, but she dove behind a minion so the ray hit him instead. Dang it. The Henching Union ³Union Strong. International Brotherhood of Henching Local 6674 (Arete Labs Curtains Company, LLC) is going to be complaining for months over that.

My other henchpeople started shooting at her, but somehow missed every shot as she did gymnastics-with-intent-to-harm at them. I really shouldn’t have cut the training budget just to make the board mandated goals for my bonus this year.

 She shrugged after effortlessly dodging several shots (since when can geckos do that?). “No, no, you’re right. I’m a no-life nerd too. But hey, leading a double life fighting crime’s gotta count for something, right?”

Having permanently crippled and possibly killed my brave employees as well as several unfortunate bystanders that happened to be dressed kind of like one, she kicked the gun out of my hand and wrapped her tongue around me.

“Ew, wtf?!” I said. It was very gross.

“Wait, I gotta take a schelfie.” Gecko-girl, muffled by her freakishly long gecko tongue, said.

“Are you filming this? Where did that phone come from?!”

“You hafe the right to remain schilent. Hi, phollowersch! It’sch ya phriendly neighborhood Gecko-Girl! I caught dis creep tryna tee-pee Wall Schtreet!”
She paused, reading the replies. “SCHUDDUP, CHAT, DAT’SCH NOT BASCED! AND SCHTOP ASCHKING FOR PICTURESCH OF MY FEET!”