The Story: In “ Geckoman”, a lab accident has shrunk Harold Biggums to the nanoscale and flung him to the ceiling of his new environment. His lab partner Nikki is trying to help him develop a device to reverse the shrinking effects, but in order to do so, she needs Harold to collect missing nanoparticles.

The problem, Harold soon discovers, is that he isn’t alone on the ceiling. An alien race, the Nanoids, have been stealing Harold and Nikki’s technology one nanoparticle at a time. Now it’s Harold’s job to stop them, using his newfound nanoscale powers!

Harold, now known as Geckoman, must steal back parts from the Nanoids, while preventing himself from gaining too much mass and falling off the ceiling. As he journeys through this strange new world, his lab partner, Nikki, helps him to better understand “real world” nanoscale forces.

The Science: Van der Waals forces involve the alignment of electrons in very small particles: the distribution of electrons within the object causes a slight positive charge to form.

From Wikipedia:

Bonding by van der Waals forces occurs through induced dipole interactions. By contrast to dipolar molecules, which possess a small static dipole due to electronegativity differences between covalently bonded atoms, dipole oscillations are observed in all atoms and molecules.

These oscillations create a dipole field that varies regularly in time, so that a nearby observer would see a positive charge at one moment, and a negative charge at the next. When two bodies have the same (or a similar) oscillation frequency, the positive charge on one body is able to synchronize with the negative charge on the next, so that electrostatic attraction occurs even though both bodies have an average charge of zero. In this way, even neutral atoms or molecules with satisfied orbitals can be bonded to one another. It is this bonding that constitutes van der Waals bonding.

This is the force that holds geckos to walls and ceilings. The gecko’s footpads are covered with tiny stiff hairs that bond electrostatically to any surface via van der Waals interactions.

World 1 Game: Our character, Geckoman, is as small as one of the hairs on a gecko’s foot, enabling him to attach to the ceiling just as well. However, because he is so small, other particles will stick to him as he moves around the upside down world of the Wild West. If Geckoman’s mass increases beyond a certain threshold, then the force of gravity will exceed the strength of the van der Waals forces, and Geckoman will detach from his position and fall.

The player can prevent Geckoman from falling by careful monitoring of his mass, and by dropping particles whenever he gets too heavy. In addition, the player can regulate Geckoman’s adhesion by changing to crouch mode, where he lies down and crawls across the ceiling, increasing his surface area and thus increasing the effect of the van der Waals forces.

However, the ceiling contains varied surfaces, some of which are smooth and some of which are rough. The extra-rough surfaces are harder to stick to because the surface area with which Geckoman has contact is reduced. The extra-smooth surface, by contrast, is far easier to stick to, and increases Geckoman’s adhesion.

The player may also increase Geckoman’s adhesion by picking up liquid droplets that are scattered throughout the board. Capillary forces come into play when the adhesive intermolecular forces between the liquid and a solid are stronger than the cohesive intermolecular forces within the liquid. The result is that Geckoman is pulled towards the ceiling by the liquid, thus giving him an additional force to work against gravity.

World 2 & 3 Games: In subsequent worlds, the player builds on the knowledge acquired about van der Waals and Capillary forces from World 1, and new information is added about elecrostatic charges and surface tension. In the final world, Geckoman must collect the ten parts of the shrinking machine so that he can return to the human scale and stop the Nanoids once and for all!