MECHANICAL ANALYSIS OF A SPIDERMAN TOY

The spider man toy can continually flip on a vertical glass wall, its mechanism is studied in this paper. With a model consisting of viscoelastic and negative stiffness elements, the time-delayed debonding phenomenon of the rubber-glass interface is explained. Due to the phenomenon, in each flipping cycle, the upper extremities of the toy fall off while the lower ones still stick to the wall; then the system rotates about the latter, until the former finally collide into the wall and adhere to it again. During this process, the gravity potential energy first turns into the kinetic energy of the fixed-axis rotation, then further converts to the deformation energy of the rubber extremities through the collision, and is finally consumed by the damping.