Ever marveled at the unending mysteries of nature? How everything is in perfect coordination all around, how even the tiniest of insects build up their sturdy little homes, how birds travel hundreds of miles to deal with season changes and how perfectly synchronized everything is around us..
We are just one among a billion different species, who call this planet our home. It would be rather unjustified to assume ourselves the most advanced, when a huge number of innovations and technologies we see around us today has been inspired by nature. Nature has been lending us her blueprints time and again, for the benefit of mankind and this has given rise to a whole new field of study- “BIO-MIMICRY”.
In a nutshell bio mimicry involves taking inspiration from nature, its processes, models and systems to solve problems faced by mankind by mimicking nature’s time tested strategies. A lot of new innovations has been heavily borrowed from nature, including baobab tree inspired houses, blue whale inspired antibacterial surfaces, houses that collect water from fog inspired by certain desert animals and at last the kingfisher inspired bullet train.
Bullet trains have been operating in Japan since the late 90s. As they each very high speeds of about 320 kmph, a cushion of air was building up in front of it causing loud sonic booms which disturbed the people living nearby and also disrupted the lives of animals living nearby. Among the team of engineers hired to solve the problem, was a birdwatcher. He remembered that kingfishers could travel from one medium to another without making a sound and thus reasoned that making the front of the bullet trains similar to the kingfisher, which has a pointed mouth, could solve the problem. His ideas finally saw the light of day and indeed the problem was eliminated and as a bonus, the trains now consumed 15% less fuel as the front had been made more streamlined.
Another wonderful example would be the design of screens inspired by peacock feathers. When we look at the bright feathers of a peacock, we see a myriad of purple, blue, green hues which is due to the presence of certain structures in the feathers that permit them to only reflect back certain colors to our eyes. San Diego zoo in association with Qualcomm has come up with a brilliant design for device screens which has an internal structure that only reflects ambient light to produce colors. The colors are formed by reflecting and not produced by the screen itself. So, these type of screens use less power than the ordinary LCD screens.
Spider webs have been intriguing researchers for a long time due to their remarkable properties. They have some special characteristics which make them almost weightless but at the same time very strong. The molecular structure is such that even when a strand of silk is damaged, the damage is localized and the rest of the structure remains unharmed. This remarkable property has inspired many architectural designs like suspension bridges, arachnid inspired human shelters, glazed glass domes etc. These structures are unusually strong and less prone to damage.
Due to the rapid development and urbanization all around us, unknowingly we have been depleting our natural resources. But solutions to all these problems are fortunately around us already. Bio mimicry offers us sustainable solutions and thus, is the key to solving global problems in the future.“Because when we take a look at what is truly sustainable, the only real model that worked is the natural model.”
SREYASHI BANDYOPADHYAY
AEIE 1ST YR
HIT-K
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