- Want to visit the world's most advanced laboratory?
Just step outside.
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You know we have to thank scientists and inventors
for the amazing technology we have today.
But who do they have to thank?
Well the answer for a lot of them is nature.
Because while we've really been at the inventing game
seriously since the mid 19th century
after the industrial revolution,
nature's been playing this game for billions of years.
Testing out different options,
finding out which one's the best so,
doesn't come as a huge surprise
that scientists and inventors
often look to nature for inspiration.
For example, consider spiderwebs.
Now, personally, my own experience with spiderwebs
is pretty much limited to accidentally walking through them
and suddenly becoming a master of kung fu.
But the scientists at the University of Akron
had a slightly different approach.
They looked at attachment disks.
Now these are the anchor points for spiderwebs,
it's where the web attaches to something else
and they're really sticky and really strong
and the scientists wanted to know why.
So they looked really closely and it turned out
that each web was held in place
by a series of tiny spider silk threads
in a particular geometric pattern
and this made them very strong and efficient.
Well the scientists used a technique called electrospinning
to pull thin filaments of polyurethane
and used it in that same geometric pattern
to anchor a nylon thread,
making their own synthetic adhesive.
And this could be incredibly useful in the biomedical field.
Just imagine that you've unfortunately broken a bone.
But using this technique,
a doctor could stitch the bone together so tightly
that it heals back much faster.
And we don't have to just stop there,
there are actually lots of other examples.
Like the world of nanotechnology.
You see, a team at North Carolina State University
was trying to figure out
how to make thin layer solar panels more efficient.
Because light was reflecting off between the layers
and that's lost light.
And they looked at moth eyes,
which are really non-reflective,
and discovered that they have tiny nanostructures
that funnel light back into the eye.
So they built synthetic nanostructures
that mimic this same property
and made the solar panels more efficient.
And what if we go a little more abstract.
Consider the centripetal spiral.
This is a shape that shows up again and again in nature.
From nautilus shells to the shape of a whirlpool.
A company called Pax looked at this shape
and discovered it's the most efficient means
of moving fluid through a system.
So they started building products based on it,
everything from fans to mixing equipment.
And to bring it back around to adhesives,
consider the gecko.
I love these guys, they can climb up walls and ceilings
and even hang from a pane of glass from a single toe.
And it's all because of nano sized elastic hairs
they have on their feet and toes.
By making similar synthetic hairs
in a similar geometric configuration,
scientists have made dry adhesives based off the gecko.
My point here is this is just a glimpse
at the millions of examples of how nature
has inspired technology and science.
And I think it's a great argument
for funding biological sciences.
So that we learn not just about other organisms,
but potentially spark the next technological innovation.
And who knows, maybe in the future
we'll all have gecko suits
and we can scale walls with our bare hands.
Or perhaps, the next time I encounter a spiderweb,
I'll master my tiger crane style.
(kung fu music)
All right I have a question for all of you.
What technology based off of nature
do you think is the coolest in the world?
Tell us in the comments below and explain your answer.
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