8 useful alternative Ways to Use scotch tape

On September 8, 1930, an employee of the 3M company, Richard Drew, invented an adhesive tape-scotch. Of course, even before 1930, there were prototypes of scotch tape. For example, the original version of the adhesive tape consisted of a gas cloth and gutta-percha and was patented in the name of Paul Karl Bayersdof in 1882.

It is customary to use scotch tape mainly to glue several objects together, but for almost a century of its existence, other ways of using transparent adhesive tape have appeared, and some of them are very unexpected. We offer you a selection of eight unusual ways of useful use of scotch tape.

If you have pets, then you are probably familiar with such a problem — to clean clothes from wool. Usually, for this purpose, they buy a special sticky roller or simply run a wet hand over the clothes, and the second method is not too effective, and the roller may not be nearby. In this case, you can use tape: unwrap a little tape from the roll, attach the adhesive side to the clothes and pull sharply — all the hairs that stick to the clothes will be on the tape. By the way, in the same way you can get rid of your favorite sweater from the pellets, without damaging the fabric.

If the splinter does not sit too deep, then you can use tape to extract it. You need to glue the tape to the affected area of the skin and pull sharply in the same direction in which the splinter entered. Just pay attention that you need to do everything quickly, without trying to pull the splinter gradually, otherwise there is a risk that it will break and part of it will remain in the skin. If you do everything right, then the splinter will come out quite easily. The undoubted advantage of this method over traditional picking with a needle is that you will not leave additional damage on the skin and will not make the wound deeper.

If you have received a shallow, but painful wound and the blood does not stop in any way, then thoroughly wash the damaged area, bring the edges of the wound together and glue tape to this place — the blood will stop quickly. However, when you still get to the first-aid kit, then treat the wound with iodine or green paint.

In a similar way, you can use scotch tape to prevent the appearance of corns. If you feel that the shoes are unbearably rubbing, and there is no adhesive tape again, glue the tape to this place: the skin will not directly contact with the shoes, which means that it will immediately become easier.

Over time, the tips of even the highest-quality laces become unusable and it becomes very problematic to put them into the holes of shoes. If you wrap the frayed ends with stationery tape, then they will look almost like new, and it will be easy to put them into the holes.

Nowadays, artists often use scotch tape for this purpose. Some, such as the famous Mark Jenkins, make life-size human figures out of scotch tape. To do this, a person is put on tight clothes, which it is not a pity to spoil, and then wrap it on top with a thin food film so that the tape does not stick directly to the clothes, and glue the tape on top. Artists recommend pre-cutting the tape into small strips 15-20 cm long and gradually sticking them on the body of the "model" in several layers. When the sculpture is ready, dense layers of adhesive tape are carefully cut off from the body of the "model", and then re-connected at the cut points with the same adhesive tape or resistant glue. Of course, you can wrap any object with tape in the same way.

To do this, you need to take an adhesive tape of medium stickiness and nail polish. First, check how well the tape holds on the nail — it is important that it is easily peeled off. If everything is in order, then you can proceed directly to the nails. First, paint your nails with varnish in one layer and wait until it is completely dry. Then cut the tape into different shapes — squares, triangles, abstractions. It is desirable that the figures have more sharp corners. Then stick the tape on the nails, cover it with a different color varnish and carefully remove the excess tape with tweezers. The result will be abstract patterns on the nails — in those places where you pasted tape on the nails, and then removed it, the varnish with which you originally covered the nails will be visible.

If you stick an adhesive tape on a frosted glass, then you can see through it almost as well as through a transparent one. The fact is that the light, falling on the surface of the frosted glass, is scattered, and the adhesive layer on the tape fills the irregularities in the frosted glass, and as a result, it is much easier for light rays to pass through it.

Graphene is an ultra-thin layer of carbon with a thickness of one atom, which is currently the most durable of all materials known to mankind. Due to its thickness, it is completely transparent. But the most interesting thing is not even its amazing properties, but the way in which the material was first obtained. To create graphene, its discoverers Andrey Geim and Konstantin Novoselov needed scotch tape.

The researchers took a simple pencil, glued an adhesive tape to the graphite, and then peeled it off — a layer of graphite one atom thick remained on the adhesive side. Then the tape was dissolved with the help of chemicals, and the result was graphene — this experience can easily be repeated at home.