Science on the half shell: Mussels yield new material
When she first saw it, Francesca Kerton thought someone must be playing a prank.
The white blobs didn’t belong there, thought Dr. Kerton, a chemistry professor at Memorial University in the Canadian province of Newfoundland. They were soft and pliable, and they had emerged from mussel shells made of calcium carbonate, which is famously hard and brittle.
But, sure enough, when they repeated the experiment, that spongy stuff appeared again.
Being scientists, they poked and prodded the baffling blobs. They ripped the material apart like cotton candy, stuck it back together, stretched
Blob and weaveMussel bound
