Estate Living Magazine Investment - Issue 34 October 2018 | Page 54

Natural inspiration
When last did you walk in a pine forest, where the swish of your shoes
through the bed of pine needles was punctuated by the occasional
thwack as a pine cone fell to the ground? Ordinarily, most of us
would bend down, pick it up, breathe in the heady pine scent and
either toss it aside or keep it to add to the Christmas tree.
Some, however, would take a second look – like a team of Swiss scientists
did – and learn from nature’s amazing future-proofing strategies.
In the case of the humble pine cone, it future-proofs itself by ensuring
that it releases its seeds at the perfect time, when the conditions are
best suited for dispersal. In warm, dry weather, when conditions are
optimal, the seed-bearing scales of the pine cone open, enabling
the paper-thin seeds to be carried away in the breeze, whereas in
cooler, humid conditions the scales close tightly, protecting the
seeds from being damaged by the damp weather. Ingenious, one
says … absolutely!
Biomimicry (noun) is the ‘design and production of materials,
structures and systems modelled on biological entities and
processes’. In lay terms it’s when designers, engineers and product
developers are so blown away by what nature does that they just
cannot help but be inspired to copy it in some way. And that’s what
happened when a team of material scientists from ETH Zürich,
a science, technology, engineering and mathematics university
in the city, were inspired by – generally – how plant components
respond to external stimuli, and – specifically – the way the pine
cone’s scales work. When we look at a pine cone, we see just the
woody scales, but each scale consists of two firmly connected
layers with rigid fibres running perpendicular to one another. It
is this alignment that allows the differential expansion. Exposure
to moisture causes one layer to expand, which forces the scale to
bend in the opposite direction, thus closing the pine cone. Savvy
researchers realised this property could be used in a number of
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