Biomimicry
Summary
TLDRThe transcript explores the concept of biomimicry, where humans can learn from nature's 3.8 billion years of innovation to create sustainable solutions. It highlights how mimicking natural processes and designs can lead to advancements in various fields, including material science, energy conservation, and environmental protection. Examples range from using spider silk's strength in fiber manufacturing to the Namibian beetle's fog-harvesting abilities for water conservation. The narrative encourages embracing nature's wisdom to build a more sustainable future.
Takeaways
- 🌿 Life on Earth has been evolving sustainable strategies for 3.8 billion years, offering valuable lessons for human sustainability.
- 🧬 Biomimicry is a discipline that involves looking to nature for solutions to human problems, emulating the strategies used by organisms that have survived for eons.
- 🌞 Life operates on principles like running on sunlight, using water as a universal solvent, and valuing local expertise and diversity.
- 🔬 Nature's chemistry is characterized by using a small subset of safe elements and reactions that are low temperature, low pressure, and low toxicity.
- 🕸 Spiders create silk stronger than steel using water at room temperature, demonstrating how nature achieves remarkable results with benign conditions.
- 🐚 Abalone shells are twice as tough as high-tech ceramics, showcasing nature's ability to self-assemble strong materials from simple elements in seawater.
- 🌳 Plants convert CO2 into useful structures like cellulose, and companies are mimicking this process to turn CO2 into biodegradable plastics.
- 🏗️ Coral reefs sequester CO2, inspiring technologies that can produce concrete with less emissions by using CO2 and seawater as raw materials.
- 🌬️ The Namibian beetle's ability to collect water from fog has been mimicked to create fog-catching nets for agriculture and self-filling water bottles.
- 🌱 Scientists are studying plants that thrive in extreme conditions to develop crops that require less water, addressing water scarcity in agriculture.
- 🎨 Nature often uses structural color rather than chemical pigments, a principle that can be applied to create long-lasting, vibrant colors in human products.
Q & A
What is the core idea behind biomimicry?
-The core idea behind biomimicry is to look to nature as a mentor and model for sustainable design and innovation. It involves studying the strategies that organisms have developed over billions of years to survive and thrive on Earth and then emulating those strategies in human-made products and systems.
Why should we consider biological organisms as mentors for sustainability?
-Biological organisms should be considered as mentors for sustainability because they have evolved over billions of years to create efficient, effective, and sustainable ways of living. They are experts in their environments, using local resources and energy in ways that do not harm their habitats, which is a model we can learn from to create a more sustainable human footprint.
What are some principles of life that can guide our approach to being better adapted to Earth?
-Some principles of life that can guide our approach include: running on sunlight, conducting chemistry in water, relying on local expertise, valuing diversity and cooperation, upcycling waste, and not fouling one's nest. These principles suggest that we should design systems that are energy-efficient, use water as a universal solvent, understand and respect local ecosystems, promote biodiversity, and ensure that our actions do not harm the environment.
How does nature's approach to chemistry differ from synthetic chemistry used in industrial processes?
-Nature's approach to chemistry is characterized by using a small subset of safe elements and elegant, low-temperature, low-pressure, and low-toxicity reactions. In contrast, synthetic chemistry often involves using every element in the periodic table, including toxic ones, and employing brute force reactions to bond or break elements apart.
What is an example of how biomimicry is being used to create stronger materials?
-One example is the study of spider silk, which is five times stronger than steel when compared ounce per ounce. This has inspired fiber manufacturers to look into creating stronger, more sustainable materials by mimicking the natural processes spiders use to create their silk.
How is biomimicry being applied to address the issue of carbon dioxide emissions?
-Biomimicry is being applied to carbon dioxide emissions by mimicking natural processes that use CO2 as a building block. For instance, companies like Novomer and Newlight are converting CO2 into biodegradable plastics, and Blue Planet is using CO2 to precipitate the raw materials for concrete, effectively sequestering carbon in the process.
What is an example of how biomimicry can help in conserving energy?
-An example of how biomimicry can help conserve energy is the study of ant and bee communication patterns by the software company Regen. They applied these algorithms to sensors on appliances, which allowed them to communicate and reduce peak energy demand by 25 to 30 percent, thus conserving energy.
How does the concept of structural color in nature inspire new ways of creating color in human-made products?
-Structural color in nature, such as seen in hummingbird feathers and peacocks, is created through the interaction of light with microstructures rather than pigments. This inspires the development of products with color that is built into the material's structure, which could last longer and be more vibrant without the need for chemical pigments.
What is the 'Lotus effect' and how is it being applied in human-made products?
-The 'Lotus effect' refers to the self-cleaning property of the lotus leaf, which is due to its micro-structured, waxy surface that causes water to bead up and roll off, taking dirt with it. This concept is being applied in products like fabrics, roofing tiles, and paints that mimic this structure to repel dirt and water, reducing the need for chemical cleaning agents.
How does biomimicry offer solutions to the problem of bacterial resistance in hospitals?
-Biomimicry addresses bacterial resistance by looking at how certain organisms, like the Galapagos shark, naturally repel bacteria through the shape of their skin. Companies like Sharklet Technologies are creating surfaces that mimic this texture to prevent bacterial adhesion and biofilm formation, offering a non-chemical solution to reducing hospital-acquired infections.
Outlines
🌿 Bio-mimicry: Learning from Nature's Engineers
The paragraph introduces the concept of bio-mimicry, a discipline where humans learn from nature's solutions to create sustainable designs. It emphasizes the importance of looking to life on Earth, which has been around for 3.8 billion years, as a guide for sustainable living. The speaker suggests that organisms are the ultimate engineers, chemists, and technologists, having evolved to create a sustainable world. The idea is to take cues from these 'biological elders' rather than re-inventing the wheel. The paragraph also touches on the principles of life, such as running on sunlight, using water as a solvent, valuing local expertise, and banking on diversity and cooperation.
🕸 Nature's Innovations in Materials and Energy
This paragraph delves into specific examples of how nature's innovations are being applied to solve modern problems. It discusses how spiders create incredibly strong silk at room temperature and low pressure, which inspires fiber manufacturers. The paragraph also covers the self-assembly of materials like the mother-of-pearl found in abalone shells, which is twice as tough as human-made ceramics. It mentions companies that are mimicking these natural processes to create biodegradable plastics from carbon dioxide and methane, and a company that uses CO2 to make concrete, sequestering carbon in the process. The paragraph also explores energy conservation through biomimicry, such as software that mimics ant communication to reduce energy demand and a wind farm design inspired by fish schooling behavior.
💧 Water Conservation and Biomimetic Solutions
The focus of this paragraph is on finding solutions to water scarcity through biomimicry. It highlights the Namibian beetle's ability to collect water from fog and how this has inspired new fog-catching technologies. The paragraph also discusses the potential of using nature's filtration methods, like the aquaporin channels in fish gills, to create more efficient desalination membranes. It mentions how scientists are studying plants that thrive in extreme conditions to develop crops that require less water, which is crucial for a water-stressed planet. The paragraph concludes with examples of how shape, rather than chemistry, can be used to solve problems, such as the structural coloration in birds and butterflies that does not fade.
🌱 Sustainable Agriculture and Structural Solutions
This paragraph explores how biomimicry can contribute to sustainable agriculture and cleaning methods. It discusses the discovery of a fungus that allows certain plants to grow with less water, which could lead to more water-efficient crops. The paragraph also introduces the concept of structural color, where color is created through the arrangement of layers rather than pigments, potentially leading to long-lasting, non-fading colors in products. Additionally, it covers the 'Lotus effect,' where the surface structure of a lotus leaf repels dirt and water, inspiring self-cleaning materials. The paragraph concludes with a discussion on how nature's strategies for preventing bacterial growth, such as the skin structure of the Galapagos shark, can be applied to create surfaces that resist bacterial colonization.
🌱 The Future of Biomimicry: A Sustainable World
The final paragraph summarizes the overarching theme of biomimicry as a path to a sustainable future. It emphasizes that the answers to creating conditions conducive to life are all around us in the form of millions of species. The speaker calls for humanity to learn from these biological models and integrate their strategies into our designs and practices. The paragraph concludes with a vision of a future where biomimicry leads to beauty, abundance, and fewer regrets, highlighting the natural world's definition of success as the continuity of life across generations.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Biomimetics
💡Sustainability
💡Chemical vs. Structural Solutions
💡Life's Principles
💡Carbon Sequestration
💡Energy Conservation
💡Desalination
💡Adaptation
💡Diversity
💡Elegant Solutions
💡Industrial Chemistry vs. Nature's Chemistry
Highlights
Life on Earth has been learning for 3.8 billion years about sustainability and what lasts.
Biological organisms are seen as mentors for creating a sustainable world.
Bio-mimicry is a discipline where we learn from nature's solutions to human problems.
Nature uses a small subset of the periodic table and low toxicity reactions for chemistry.
Organisms create materials in and near their bodies, avoiding high temperatures and toxins.
Spiders create a fiber stronger than steel using low temperatures and pressures.
Abalone shells are twice as tough as high-tech ceramics, made from simple materials in seawater.
Carbon dioxide is seen by life as a building block, not a poison.
Companies are mimicking nature to turn carbon dioxide into biodegradable plastics.
Coral reefs sequester CO2, inspiring a company to make concrete that stores carbon.
Software company Regen mimics ant communication to reduce energy demand.
Caltech students designed a wind farm based on fish schooling to increase energy efficiency.
The Namibian beetle's fog-collecting abilities are being mimicked for water conservation.
Nature's membranes, like in fish, are used for desalination with less energy than traditional methods.
Agricultural innovations are looking at plants that grow in extreme conditions for water efficiency.
Structural color in nature, like in peacock feathers, is being used to create non-fading colors in products.
The Lotus effect, where the lotus leaf's structure repels dirt, is used in self-cleaning products.
Sharklet Technologies mimics shark skin to create surfaces that repel bacteria.
Nature's principles can guide us towards creating conditions conducive to life for future generations.
Transcripts
life's been on earth for 3.8 billion
years and in that time life has learned
what works and and what's appropriate
here and what lasts here and the idea is
that um perhaps we should be looking at
these mentors at these biological elders
they have figured out how to create a
sustainable world
so rather than inventing it from scratch
um why don't we take our our cues from
them it's these are earth savvy
adaptations and the consummate life is
these organisms are the consummate
engineers they're the consummate
chemists and technologists they've
learned how to do it in context so
that's the core idea behind bio memory
um is that that the best ideas might not
be ours you might already have been
invented
I'll mimicry is innovation inspired by
nature it's a new discipline in which
the people that make our world are
chemists and architects material
scientists and product designers they
ask themselves what in the natural world
has already solved what it is I'm trying
to solve and then they try to emulate
what they've learned our work as a
species is to create designs and and
strategies that move us towards being
better adapted to life on Earth
over the long haul and when you when you
ask how to be better adapted to this
planet there are no better models than
the species that have preceded us for
billions of years you know there are
thirty to a hundred million species
maybe more and in all that diversity um
there is a hidden unity um there are a
set of operating instructions how to be
an earthling and their their life's
principles like life runs on sunlight
except for a few organisms in sulfur
vents at the bottom of the ocean life
runs on current sunlight we run on
ancient photosynthesis trapped in fossil
fuels life does it's chemistry in water
as the universal solvent and we tend to
use very very toxic solvents like
sulfuric acid life depends on local
expertise organisms have to understand
their places they have to know the
limits and the opportunities of their
places and life banks on diversity and
rewards cooperation life waste nothing
up cycles everything and most of all
does not foul its nest does not foul its
home we're a very young species and
probably our best stance as a young
species is to be apprentices to these
masters
we need to replace our old industrial
chemistry book with nature's recipe book
our synthetic chemistry is completely
different ten nature's chemistry we use
every element in a periodic table
even the toxic ones and then we use
brute force reactions to to get elements
to bond or break apart life uses a small
subset of the periodic table is the safe
elements and then very very elegant
recipes low temperature low pressures
low toxicity that's nature's chemistry
it's a very different paradigm and we
have to ask ourselves not just how to
replace individual molecules for
different kinds of molecules but rather
whole families of reactions it's a big
job to do that ah but it's it's an
Apollo project worth pursuing
organisms make materials in and near
their own body so they can't afford to
heat things up to astronomical
temperatures or to use toxins or high
pressures so for instance a spider it
takes what comes into its web a fly
flies into its web it takes that it does
chemistry and water at room temperature
at very low pressures and it creates
this amazing fiber that ounce per ounce
is five times stronger than steel and
this is being looked at now by fiber
manufacturers
nature's also really good at making hard
materials like ceramics if you take the
inside of an abalone shell which is that
iridescent mother-of-pearl why material
is twice as tough as our high-tech
ceramics and what those mother-of-pearl
layers are composed of is just very
simple materials in seawater so what
happens is the soft bodied critter
releases a protein into the seawater
creates a template and on this template
there's charged landing sites and the
calcium and carbonate in the seawater is
also charged and it lands in particular
sites which directs the crystallization
automatic self-assembly crystallization
of this incredible material and and
actually it's a self-healing material
beautiful architecture incredibly benign
manufacturing and people are figuring
out how to make ceramics without ever
using a kiln and this has been looked at
for both reasons for the blueprint and
for the recipe of how you self-assemble
out of seawater um a hard material
the one thing that we have an awful lot
of is carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
and we think of it as the poison of our
era life sees carbon dioxide as a
building block carbon dioxide is used by
plants to make sugars and starches and
cellulose it's used by organisms in the
sea to make their shells and to make
coral reefs and that chemistry that's
co2 to stuff chemistry is now being
mimicked so Nova mer is a company that
takes carbon dioxide and turns it into
biodegradable plastics there's also a
company called new light and their
products called air carbon and they're
taking methane which is an even worse
greenhouse gas and they're using that to
create packaging Della's using all their
packaging now made out of this air
carbon it's called there are chairs made
from it the first carbon negative chairs
in the world made of this kind of
plastic that comes from co2
the most used building material on the
planet is concrete the manufacturer of
concrete produces five to eight percent
of all co2 emissions when you look at a
coral reef which is a concrete like
structure you realize that co2 is
actually sequestered so there's a
company called blue planet that is now
taking the recipe from the coral reef
and they're taking co2 from flue stacks
and they're taking seawater putting
those together and precipitating out the
raw materials for concrete and in fact
they're now able to sequester a half a
ton of co2 for every ton of concrete so
if you can imagine someday us using
carbon dioxide and sequestering it
long-term geological sequestration in
the buildings that are all around us
that's what's exciting about biomimicry
you say to yourself there's existence
fruits that there's another way to do
this
in the arena of conserving energy
there's a software company called regen
and they've studied how ants and E's
communicate to one another in order to
find food sources and and to help
streamline their foraging and what
they've done is they've applied these
algorithms to sensors that they're able
to put on appliances and drastically
reduce peak demand by 25 to 30 percent
reducing energy bills by having these
appliances communicate with one another
and dial down the need for energy at
Caltech students have come up with a new
kind of wind farm that's based on how
fish move in a school so when Fisher are
moving they group together and the ones
in the front as with our cinemas
movements they kind of throw off
vortices these little spirals in the
water and then the ones behind them
curve around those spirals and actually
they get flung upstream saving a lot of
energy so what these students did was
they said why don't we take vertical
axis wind turbines and instead of
spreading them out on the landscape like
you would with traditional wind turbines
why don't we pack them as closely as
possible together and they did this and
they found that when the first axis is
turned they would create these spirals
and the ones behind them would start to
turn even before the wind hit them and I
got ten times more wind power out of a
wind farm this way for a with a lot less
land use
one of the things that erst e planet
will need is a way to find more fresh
water
the Namibian beetle lives in the Namib
Desert drinks entirely from the fog that
comes in a few times a week it has these
special structures on its wing scales
that condense the water out of fog very
very efficiently ten times better than
our fog catching Nets this Namibian
beetle effect has been mimicked by many
companies trying to make new fog
catching nets for agriculture along fog
coasts there's also a small company
that's called NBD Nano and they're
creating the fog catching surface along
the inside of a water bottle and
creating a self filling water bottle
that will fill itself with the humidity
in the air life is really good at
filtering especially to recover fresh
water if you think about a fish every
fish in the ocean is a desalination
plant it's living on fresh water in its
cells but it has to create that fresh
water from salt water so it's
desalinating so this this idea of
nature's membranes we even have them in
our bodies we have them in our kidneys
and in our red blood cells and we have
these little pores called aquaporins and
what they do is they actually because of
their shape and their charges they are
perfect for water molecules water
molecules are attracted to the pores to
the channels and then they move through
them very very easily leaving everything
else behind and that's been mimicked in
a membrane with a company a danish
company called aquaporin and they're
doing desalination membranes that
instead of the energy intensive reverse
osmosis which pushes water against a
membrane they're using the aquaporin
membrane to pull water molecules through
in something called forward osmosis a
fraction of the energy
use and about a hundred times more
permeable than the normal membranes that
we use in our big desalination plants
agriculture is one of our biggest uses
of water and if we can find a way to
grow plants with with less water that's
gonna go a long way for a thirsty planet
what scientists are doing is that
they're looking at places where plants
are growing in extreme conditions and
asking how are you doing that guy named
rusty Rodriguez went to the Yellowstone
hot springs and these hot pools have a
grass growing around them called panic
grass which shouldn't technically be
able to live in those conditions but he
dug down in the roots and he found that
there was a fungal helper wrapped around
the reed that was allowing the plant to
grow in these very hot conditions and he
was able to inoculate seeds with a
fungus that enabled the plant to grow
five times more rice with half the water
use which is really really important if
we're talking about a climate changed
world where drought is the new normal
it's really interesting is sometimes you
are asking yourself how to replace a
chemical and when you loop to the
natural world you realize there's a big
paradigm shift because you don't even
need the chemical life often uses shape
instead of chemistry so for instance
paints these are chemical pigments often
we use really toxic materials like
chromium or cadmium in our paints and
the question is can you create color
without chemistry can you create it with
structure turns out that the some of the
most brilliant organisms in the natural
world create their color through playing
with light so structure so this is these
are the hummingbirds Emma and the morpho
butterflies and the peacocks a peacocks
feather is has no pigment in and except
for brown all of those colors that you
see are created from very simple layers
that are certain distance apart and when
light comes through it gets bent it gets
refracted it gets amplified to create
the color blue to your eye or the color
yellow or the color gold all without
chemistry
it's just structure and structural color
is four times brighter than pigmented
color never fades imagine if we were
able to create products where the last
few dip coatings of the surface of the
product say a car would be transparent
layers that played with light in such a
way to create a color no painting no
repainting it's built right into the
structure of the product another kind of
chemistry that we're always looking for
alternatives to is a better soap a
better way of cleaning without
phosphates and other things in our
wastewater
life also has to stay clean
imagine a leaf a leaf has to stay clean
in order to photosynthesize so
scientists a couple of decades ago put a
lotus leaf put that under a microscope
and found that the way it stays clean
it's not a chemical solution it's
actually a structural solution has tiny
bumps there are certain distance apart
and they're waxy and rainwater balls up
on this surface and dirt particles don't
really adhere they they kind of Teeter
on the mountaintops and the ball of rain
when the leaf tilts picks up those dirt
particles as it rolls off pearls it away
and it's become known as the Lotus
effect so now there's all kinds of
products there's there's a fabrics with
the Lotus effect Big Sky Technologies
does that and and shoulder and there's
roofing tiles Earl estroux f---ing tiles
there's a paint from a company called
Stowe called Lotus in' and when it dries
it has that bumpy structure so that dirt
really can't adhere and rainwater cleans
the building instead of sandblasting or
applying chemicals and soap so it's a
whole new way of cleaning it's another
one of those paradigm flips that you
often see in the natural world when you
look to nature for for solutions
the big problem of superbugs in
hospitals and the fact that we use so
many antibiotics in order to to battle
bacteria so for instance there's a
company called sharklet they said is
there how does nature manage bacteria
they found this very interesting shark
the Galapagos shark which is a basking
shark that has no bacteria on its
surface even though it doesn't move very
much it has no bacteria on its surface
how is that possible
well the shape of its skin turns out to
be something that bacteria do not like
to land on or to form their films on so
by mimicking that shape sharklet
technologies has created thin films that
you can put on door knobs and hospital
railing bed railings and and all kinds
of surfaces and what it what the shape
does is it actually repels the bacteria
it's a shield against bacterial
infection but it's not done with
chemistry it's done with structure
you know the answers we seek the secrets
to a sustainable world are literally all
around us and if we choose to truly
mimic life's genius ah the future I see
would be beauty and abundance and
certainly fewer regrets in the natural
world definition of success is the
continuity of life you keep yourself
alive
and you keep your offspring a lot that's
success but it's not the offspring in
this generation success is keeping your
offspring alive 10,000 generations and
more and that presents a conundrum
because you cannot you're not gonna be
there to take care of your offspring
10,000 generations from now so what
organisms have learned to do is to take
care of the place that's gonna take care
of their offspring life has learned to
create conditions conducive to life and
that's really the magic heart of it life
creates conditions conducive to life and
that's also the design brief for us
right now we have to learn how to do
that and luckily we're surrounded by the
answers and you know millions of species
willing to gift us with their best ideas
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