Water off a duck's back
Technology can do amazing things, but it can still learn a few things from nature. Some of our most interesting advances come about from mimicing biological designs.
Everyone is familiar with dandelion seeds, those fluffy white tufts atop a stalk which drift for miles on the breeze. Researchers at Edinburgh University's school of biological science and engineering have looked closely at the design of the dandelion seed and discovered that the spacing and shape of the bristles forms the air into a vortex as it flows through them, greatly increasing the drag and stability which reduces the rate of descent and allows the seeds to "drift" on the lightest of currents.
This porous parachute is four times more efficient than our conventional parachutes, and now that nature's design is understood, it could open the door to using a similar design on lightweight drones that require little or no power to remain aloft and which could be used for air quality monitoring, for example.
Some remarkable pieces of technology have been inspired by seeing how nature got their first. Swiss engineer George de Mestral saw how the buds of the burdock plant adhered to the coat of his dog, although it took him a further 14 years to replicate this effect in the product we now know as Velcro. NASA has copied the structure of shark skin to produce a drag reduction system for ships which proved so successful that its use was initially banned in the Americas Cup. Engineers from Virginia Tech noticed how silently the owl flies and used a 3D printer to create a plastic coating for turbine blades which mimics the owl's feather structure and reduces turbine noise by half. An everyday example of biomimicry is the daylight-readable screen on the mobile phone. The Mirasol display, invented by Qualcomm, is based on the light reflecting properties of the scales on the wings of butterflies.
Next time you go for a walk in the rain, and contemplate that it is good weather for ducks, ask yourself why don't ducks get wet? A duck can dip under the muddy murky water, and when it resurfaces, the water rolls off its back leaving it perfectly dry and clean. Many things in nature have water-repellent properties, and chemists have been able to reproduce these properties. You may have heard of "self-cleaning" skyscrapers which use paints and coatings which dirt and dust simply will not stick to. This is sometimes called the "Lotus Effect" because the inventor, Wilhelm Barthlott, was inspired by the mud-resistant properties of the lotus plant.
One example of a super-hydrophobic coating is Ultra Everdry, and this video they've put together shows the massive potential of these products, particularly as a way of protecting electronic devices from the weather.
31st October 2018
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.