Comic books, television, popular songs convey a lot of informatiion about science. Sometimes scientists deliberately use a pop culture reference to get a point across.

Spiderman

In describing work which explores adhesive forces Professor Nicola Pugno, engineer and physiciist at Polytechnic of Turin, Italy, used Spiderman as an analogy saying, "With the idea for adhesion now in place, there are a number of other mechanics that need addressing before the Spiderman suit can become a reality."

The scientist and his colleagues first solved the mystery about how spiders and geckos can stick to walls and ceilings. They concluded that van der Waals' forces--a weak attraction that molecules have for each other (xxxlink Sticky and fast)--was the secred behint the creatures' sticking abilities. For example, the tiny hairs on a spider's feet atract molecules to a surface (even a glass surface) which act like weak magnets allowing the spider to exploit the adhesive quality while muscular strength can be used to break the attraction, allowing the spider to climb up walls and move across ceiliings while upside down.

Inivisibility cloaks