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Fact-based Nature Did It First
The lantern of a firefly is covered in scales that fit together badly, like wonky roof tiles, and copying that jagged pattern let a lab LED give out up to 55 per cent more light.
Fact-based How It Started
A young engineer on a Florida beach stretched the dots and dashes of Morse code into lines in the sand, and about 25 years later his idea rang up a pack of chewing gum.
Fact-based Nature Did It First
A pine cone opens in dry air and shuts in the rain without a single living cell, and engineers have copied its swelling layers to build shading that needs no motor and no electricity.
Fact-based How It Started
A father watching his daughter struggle with a straight straw at a soda counter reached for a screw and some dental floss, and the first customers for his idea were not children at all.
Fact-based Nature Did It First
The florets in a sunflower head sit in a spiral that wastes no space, and engineers found that the same pattern fits a field of solar mirrors into a fifth less land.
Fact-based How It Started
In 1943 an engineer working on springs to steady instruments on ships knocked one off a shelf, and instead of flopping in a heap it walked down to the floor and stood up.
Fact-based Nature Did It First
A shark's skin is covered in tiny tooth-shaped scales, and copying their fine ridges gave engineers a film of grooves, no deeper than a scratch, that helps hulls and wings meet less drag.
Fact-based Nature Did It First
The eyes of a moth are covered in bumps far too small to see, and copying them helps screens, lenses and solar panels shake off their glare.
Fact-based Nature Did It First
In the Namib Desert a small black beetle stands on its head at dawn to catch fog on its back, and engineers have been borrowing its trick ever since.
Fact-based Nature Did It First
In the middle of Harare stands a big office and shopping centre with no ordinary air conditioning, designed after a long look at the tall earth towers that termites build.