The natural world has spent nearly four billion
years on finding solutions for almost ever y single
problem you can imagine, from dealing with dir t,
to producing colour, to making hyper-ef ficient
flying machines!
Humans have now finally cottoned on to these
wacky and wonder ful adaptations, and have
star ted using Nature’s blueprints to find simple
strategies for improving the ways we do things.
This process of being inspired by the natural
world is call “b i omimi c r y”. “Bio” means life, and
“mimic” means copy; so we are basically copying
the way life does things!
The kinds of technologies that scientists are
developing using biomimicr y are cer tainly stranger
than fiction. And as Nature also does things as
ef ficiently as possible, these technologies are also
often much more sustainable!NATURE
KNOWS
BEST
NATURE
KNOWS
BEST
The next time you see a lake or pond, have
a look at the lily pads on the sur face of the water.
Under a microscope, the leaves of the lily pad are
extremely rough, just like sand paper. This texture
lets it to repel water and any kind of dir t.
Water that flows onto the lily pad’s sur face
forms little droplets that collect any dir t or
par ticles and then just roll of f, leaving behind a
clean leaf.
Researchers have used this as inspiration to
make paint that also repels dir t that can be used
to keep sur faces clean without being washed!LILY PAD PAINT
GOING GREEN!Stranger Than Fiction