The EPSRC nanotechnology image library

Nanotechnology and the running shoe

Shock revelation! Tony Ryan (ICI Professor of Physical Chemistry and EPSRC Senior Media Fellow) discusses how running shoes work...

Running shoes are designed to absorb energy, to make them comfortable and protect your feet. To do this they have to be soft and squishy, but if you walked on a soft material it would flatten out, getting deader and deader as you went through the day.

To stop this, we need to add hard bits to the formulation. These prevent the shape squishing too far, and allow it to rebound after each step. As a result, the running shoe stays in shape. The nanotechnology comes in because the soft and the hard bits we use are the size of polymer molecules.

The core of the running shoe is a polymer foam, blown by a gas generated when the polymer is made. In a simple polymer for running shoes, two different types of molecule - of different sizes and stiffness - might be used. Combining them in the correct ratio gives a sole that absorbs energy and recovers it's shape, after it has been compressed.

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Movie credits

Scientific Direction : Richard Jones

Camera : Jeff Baggott

CGI : Nick Dulake at Design Futures

Edit : Mark Purcell

Sound Composition : Susan Pennington

Production and Direction : Jeff Baggott

Thanks to : Andy Eccleston

Copyright 2005 : EPSRC, Sheffield Hallam University and the University of Sheffield

 

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License. All image post-treatments by Andy Eccleston.