Title
Bulletproof feathers : how science uses nature's secrets to design cutting-edge technology / edited by Robert Allen.
ISBN
9780226014708 (alk. paper)
0226014703 (alk. paper)
Publication Details
Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Language
English
Description
192 p. : chiefly col. ill. ; 22 cm.
Call Number
QP517.B56 B86 2010
Dewey Decimal Classification
570.1/5195
Summary
"Though they may sound like the stuff of science fiction, in fact such inventions represent only the most recent iterations of natural mechanisms that are billions of years old - the focus of the rapidly growing field of biomimetics. Based on the realization that natural selection has for countless eons been conducting trial-and-error experiments with the laws of physics, chemistry, material science, and engineering, biomimetics takes nature as its laboratory, looking to the most successful developments and strategies of an array of plants and animals as a source of technological innovation and ideas. Thus the lotus flower, with its waxy, water-resistant surface, gives us stainproofing; the feathers of raptors become transformable airplane wings; and the nerve-deadening serrations on a mosquito's proboscis are adapted to hypodermics."--pub. desc.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Aerodynamics of biological flight / Jeremy Rayner
Marine dynamics / Jeannette Yen
Humanlike robots / Yoseph Bar-Cohen
Underwater bioacoustics / Tomonari Akamatsu
Air acoustics / James Simmons
Cooperative behavior / Robert Allen
Ventilation / Steve Vogel
New materials & natural design / Julian Vincent.