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For centuries Man has looked to the wonders of nature for inspiration. Leonardo Da Vinci designed ships with hulls based on the shape of fish and, less successfully, flying machines with the flapping wings of birds in flight. It took the Wright brothers to notice that large birds are unable to flap their winds repeatedly and glide instead, an observation that led them to design successful aircraft with fixed wing structures. In ancient times, the Chinese spent many years trying to produce a synthetic silk after remarking on the incredible strength of the spider's web.
Drawing on nature for inspiration is a recognised science known as biomimetics, taken from the Greek words bios (meaning life) and mimesis (meaning imitation). Innovators have recognised that the world around us is an unlimited resource of intricate ideas just waiting to be copied. While modern industries use this concept to produce ever more high-tech inventions, there are some famous examples of biomimetics that we can all appreciate.
In the 1850s, an anatomist, Hermann Von Meyer studied the workings of the human skeleton. He noticed that the head of the femur (thigh bone) had an unusual structure, allowing the weight of the body to be supported slightly off-centre by the leg bones. Further work by engineer Karl Cullman confirmed that the ordered lattice of ridges within the femur made it perfect for supporting an off-centre load. When Gustave Eiffel built his tower in 1889, he imitated this complicated bone structure in the now familiar arches at its base. Using a series of wrought iron braces and studs, he managed to reproduce nature's ingenuity. The resulting 984 foot high tower has resisted strong winds for over one hundred years and still stands today.
One of the most prevalent examples of biomimetics is the invention of Velcro. In the early 1940s, Swiss inventor, George de Mestral, took his dog for a walk in nearby fields. Returning home, he noticed that many tiny burdock seeds had stuck firmly to his trousers, a problem familiar to many dog owners and a device used by nature to spread new plants. Intrigued by this phenomenon, he studied the burrs under the microscope and discovered that they each possessed several tiny hooks, the secret of their sticky behaviour. Realising that this simple idea could be replicated, he developed a fastener called Velcro, derived from the French words velour and crochet. De Mestral worked for several years with cloth and fabric experts to achieve a practical solution, which consisted of two strips of material; one with thousands of tiny plastic hooks and the other made from a fibrous felt. When pressed together, the two materials formed a strong bond and yet could be used many times over. This remarkable imitation of nature is still popular fifty years after it was finally patented in 1955.
Like the Eiffel Tower, the Victorian Crystal Palace owed its existence to the natural world. Designed and built in 1851 to house the Great Exhibition, the eighteen acre glass construction was designed, not by an engineer but by botanist Joseph Paxton. His studies had brought to his attention the enormous floating leaves of the water lily, victoria amazonica, which could hold the weight of a small child. The ribbed support structure on the underside of these leaves helped Paxton to devise a lightweight method for supporting huge areas of glass. He used this to conceive a 108 foot high building containing over 200,000 panes of glass and despite his lack of architectural or engineering training, won the Crystal Palace design competition. Some experts feared that huge crowds attending the exhibition could produce resonant vibrations in the iron girders of the roof, causing the whole structure to collapse. Three hundred men were instructed to jump in unison inside a scale model of the proposed building and as Paxton had promised, the supports barely moved. Work began immediately on the real Palace, which proved to be a triumph of design and would probably be standing today if a fire hadn't destroyed it in 1936.
Science continues to look to nature for new ideas. Recent examples of biomimetics include the new Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, one of the most powerful telescopes ever constructed. Here engineers have borrowed the hexagonal structure of the common honeycomb to provide the strength needed to supports its two large mirrors. A leading swimwear manufacturer has just developed a revolutionary sports swimsuit that imitates the ridges on a shark's skin, reducing the drag in the water. The clothing industry is working to create a fabric that not only has the insulating properties of penguin feathers but mimics the opening and closing of a pine cone to release and retain moisture. Throughout history humans have proved themselves to be ingenious and resourceful but, as biomimetics illustrates, Mother Nature has been a wonderful teacher.
