BiomimiWHAT?

Since arriving in New Zealand I have somehow surrounded myself with excessively smart people. From the other Fulbright students, to the delegates at the Future Partnership Forum, to folks at work, the people I encounter have given me a constant stream of interesting ideas and new important issues to consider. There’s nothing like having a fascinating conversation or attending a stimulating lecture to put you in a good mood and I’ve been lucky to experience several over the last seven weeks (yes, I’ve been here seven weeks already!).

Science excites me for several reasons: first of all, it’s usually extremely cool; second of all, it can help us improve our understanding of ourselves and of our place in the world; third of all—and this is what I’m most passionate about—science presents us with a wonderfully rational and elegant way to approach management of resources and regulation of our own actions, as well as a way to progress as a civilization that will hopefully someday incorporate the earth’s fine-tuned balance.

Since going to the Future Partnership Forum in Christchurch (part of the larger US-NZ council’s Partnership Forum) last month, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about the ways in which not only science and policy, but also science and industry, interact. (Mind you, these are not exclusive pairings.) I’ve been thinking about what it means to innovate. Creativity is the only path that will lead us to solutions for our toughest problems like dwindling resources, food and water crises, and climate change.

On my drive up to Auckland last weekend, my friend and I started discussing innovation and creativity in design, focusing on sustainability and our current environmental challenges. The conversation turned to a field called biomimicry. The concept is simple but inspired: look at how the earth and its creatures work, and try to use the designs of Mother Nature in our own products. My friend mentioned a company called Whale Power, which I have since looked up online.

The Whale Power website tells the story of the initial conception of the project: Dr. Frank Fish (amazing name) inspected a figurine of a humpback whale and wanted to understand why the whale’s flippers where bumpy on the front edge. After some serious research, he designed new blades for windmills that are more efficient than the smooth ones that human engineers first built. This is similar to the “invention” of Velcro by George de Mestral who noticed the efficacy of burrs at attaching to clothing and hair.

(Humpback whale from the web)

Coincidentally, this week at NIWA, the Thursday lecture focused on biomimicry. The speaker, a recent graduate of a masters program at Harvard University where he studies in the Lauder Laboratory, shared with us work he’d done on the fluid dynamics surrounding seal whiskers and sharkskin. Sharkskin has long been suspected to greatly reduce drag and facilitate fast and easy movement in the water, but until Johannes Oeffner decided to pursue the question for his master's thesis, no one had ever proved the existence of or quantified the phenomenon. (Spoiler alert: the sharkskin does reduce drag but a quantifiable amount!)

Data like those presented by Johannes can have an enormous impact on engineering and industry. Now that we know how good sharkskin is at reducing drag, we can design boat hulls, submarines, and cars that reduce drag with similar mechanisms, in turn reducing the energy input required to run those machines. To be sure, you readers can probably think of many more applications than I can!

(close up of sharkskin from a "glog" ?)

The Whale Power website highlights how using biological models as a template for design is, in a way, creating a product that has been field-tested for millions of years. I love the concept that the evolutionary iterations of an organism—from the constant evolution of unseen proteins to the alteration of physical characteristics we can see—represent an inimitable series of field tests. What an awesome way to look at evolution!

If we are going to achieve a better way of living, whom else should we look to but Mother Nature?