A book has just fallen down the side of a filing cabinet in the bedroom - the cabinet has been there for some 20 years, and it became clear as I poked with a long stick to get the book out of the narrow gap that a lot of grey almost felt like material had accumulated, some of it lumps of 100mm x 50.
What actually is this and why does it clump together ? Yes I know it's dirt/dust - call it what you like but what's the mechanism that makes it bind ?
Rob
In a bedroom it will be a mixture of textile fibres and dead skin mostly.
The textile fibres mostly I would have though...
Exfoliated skin cells, mostly.
Because it's greasy. The oils stick mechanically, then as they oxidise, they harden and form a clump ...
Nice, eh?
Electro static attraction maybe?
Damp in the air...
Brian
Possibly dust mites excrement binding the non organic dust together...yuk!
Most likely it clumps together with sticky silk from spiders. Wherever there's a gap wide enough to get a stick down, over the years you can be sure to get plenty of spiders of all sizes eventually bridging the gap with silk.
Clearing the corners of a room of hammock webs made by phalanges (daddy long legs) spiders with a long stick its easy to accumulate a golf ball sized lump of the stuff visible as big lumps of dust/fluff on the end of the stick just by twirling it around.
michael adams
...
how fairy floss collection was invented?
Do daddy long legs make silk? Are they spiders?
...
Just to add to the confusion, I've also heard crane flies* called "daddy long legs" - due to the way the legs dangle in flight I guess.
Lee
*might just be another peculiarity of this strange Kent town :)
Well there seem to be at least three creatures that use the term "Daddy Long Legs"
Cellar Spiders:
Like candy floss but nom as colourful or tastey ;-)
The TV series a few months back showing life behind the scenes of the London underground claimed that the tube fluffers (no, not that sort...) collect "fluff" from the tunnels that is largely made of fibres from clothing. Amazing amounts of the stuff from what I remember.
They also claimed you could tell what part of london you were working in by the type of fluff - some areas a lot of man made stuff, posh areas full of nice woollen fluff :-)
They carry sticks now??!!
Flakes of human skin. We all give them off. Most house dust is human skin and a whole range of nasty mites etc live off it. Some people are allergic to the housemite s*it dust.
I've always wondered what the white fungusy stuff you get in the corners of sheds is.
IIRC phalanges are the bones in your hand (not the fingers, but the palm) Phalangiidae?
Andy
Dry rot?
Phalanges are the fingers of the digits - those of the palm are metacarpals, of the wrist, carpals. (Tarsals for feet.)
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