Is spider web really stronger than steel?

- This is the largest amount of spider silk that's ever been put together for a test like this. So I'm gonna put it to the ultimate test, and try to be the first person ever to swing from spider silk.

I don't know if it's going to hold my weight, so let's see. In three, two, one. (Derek yelling) - In "Spider-Man Two," Peter Parker is on a runaway train full of passengers.

And to stop it from derailing, he stands in front of the train, fires webs at the buildings around him, and holds on.

The webs stretch, some of them snap, but they do just enough to slow down the train and save everyone on board.

It sounds like something straight out of a comic book. But real spider silk, the fiber that makes up a spider's web, well, it truly might be this incredible.

It's reportedly stronger than steel. It's pretty strong. That's crazy! And 10 times tougher than Kevlar.

To find out if that's really true, I went to the Blackledge Spider Lab at the University of Akron, one of the world's leading research centers studying spider silk.

Before I went to the lab, I'd always assume that a spiderweb was made from just one kind of silk. But that's actually not the case.

One type of silk anchors the web to a surface. Another forms this stretchy spiral, and a different sticky silk catches prey.

Once something's trapped, the spider switches to yet another silk to wrap it up. - The threads are all thinner than your hair, so they're going to look pretty similar to each other unless you use a microscope.

- [Henry] All in all, there are seven different types of silk, but the strongest is the dragline silk, which holds the web in its place.

- We've got the two main structural threads in this web. So the spokes on the wagon wheel and the outer framework here, that's all the dragline silk.