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What do you call a man with 36 kg (80 lbs) of metal plates, silverware, and knickknacks stuck to his body--without glue! People in his native Malaysia call him Mr. Magnet, mostly because his "attractive" body appears to exert a magnet-like pulling force on metal.
But last October, scientists at Malaysia's University of Technology found that a different force keeps metal stuck to Liew Thow Lin's flesh: friction, a "sticky" force that resists motion and keeps objects from sliding.
Scientists first scanned the 70-year-old's body for a magnetic field, an area in which a magnet exerts its force. They found none. What they did find: super-high friction levels on his skin, a trait that appears to be genetic, or inherited. "His three sons and two grandchildren also have magnetic-like flesh," researcher Mohamed Amin Alias says.
Alias is now studying the family's skin to learn why it's so sticky.
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