Biomimicry

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What does Biomimicry mean?

What does biomimicry mean? Biomimicry- The word biomimicry is a compound word, (a word which is made of 2 different word) which consists of the words bio and mimicry. I believe the word bio means natural life and the way nature works though the Oxford dictionary defines the prefix bio as just life. And the Meaning of mimicry for me is copying something or someone for purposes like entertaining someone, etc. Though the Oxford dictionary defines the word mimicry as the action or skill of imitating someone or something, especially in order to entertain or ridicule. And if we put the together it for me basically means copying or mimicking natural life thought the Oxford dictionary defines the word biomimicry as the design and production of materials, structures, and systems that are modelled on biological entities and processes.

The History of biomimicry

Early example

One of the very first examples of biomimicry was the leaning or study of flying creatures, like birds to make one of the very imaginary human need possible which was human flight. Unfortunately, the most discussed man in history of biomimicry, Leonardo Da Vinci wasn’t able to invent the world’s first human flight invention but was very interested in the anatomy of bird flight. He made uncountable sketches and recorded many of the observations and tried to use them to make a flying machine.

Who and How came across biomimicry?

Biomimicry was first invented or discovered by the American Biophysicist (The Oxford dictionary defines the word biophysicist as: the science of the application of the laws of physics to biological phenomena) and Polymath (The Oxford Dictionary describes the word polymath as: A person of wide knowledge and learning) Otto Schmitt during the year 1950. He came across this beautiful word during his doctoral research when he developed the Schmitt trigger by researching the nerves and the nerve system of a squid. He tried to engineer a device that copied the nerve propagation of that squid. His interest for devices that copied or mimicked natural systems grew and by the year 1957 he had different and developed way to look at biophysics and he named that view as biomimetic.

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Human problem

The importance of trees cannot be laughed upon in any way. This is because without trees, the Earth would be uninhabitable. Humans and most wildlife would never be able to survive without the benefits we receive from trees and other plant life. Trees don't actually “make” oxygen, but they do play a huge role in the production of breathable air.

Trees and plants use a process called photosynthesis, to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) to oxygen (O2). Photosynthesis actually means to put together with light. This means photosynthesis is driven by the power of the sun! You see, the sunlight is the light and bits of CO2 and water are the pieces being "put together". Once a tree has these three ingredients (light, carbon dioxide, and water), it uses the sun’s energy to release the carbon from the CO2, and then combine it with water, making an environmental carbohydrate, (basically a sugar.)

These carbs are pretty much food for trees. When trees are making these carbohydrates, the excess water not used contains oxygen which is released into the air for our benefit! So you see, trees do not necessarily make oxygen for us, they are simply using photosynthesis to produce food that helpfully gives off extra oxygen for the surrounding environment! 

But humans are cutting down trees even though we need them so much. Deforestation has an effect on global air quality because trees release water vapour into the air which affects atmospheric temperatures and other crucial elements that keeps the earth working normally. When there are not as many trees, less water vapour is released into the air, which means an imbalance occurs and the effects of global warming start to show. Meaning we have to stop cutting them down or we will be looking at these horrible consequences.

As well as causing a rise in the global temperature, deforestation affects the air that we breathe. This is because all trees take in carbon dioxide and other pollutants which are known to cause a lot of problems in the atmosphere. This will result in all of us breathing dirtier and more polluted air, again if we continue the path we're on we will be in a dreadful situation.

There are things we can do if we want to stop this terrible future though, like stop cutting down trees, but for the sake of this inquiry I'm going to make thing much more complicated. If humans can produce a product that can take in CO2 and use it to make O2 but use most of the O2 to keep itself running than even if we do murder the trees, we'll have a backup plan to save us from suffocation.

My idea is to make a machine that uses photosynthesis but is also solar powered, so it uses the sun's light in an even better way, while also producing more oxygen/water vapour, meaning air pollution would be reduced as well. Basically if can make this idea a reality, I could save the world. It would most probably be called the proto-leaf and the slogan would be beleaf in the leaf. Though that's besides the point it would be awesome to create something like that.

According to my research, someone tried to prove that even though scientists think  plants made most of the oxygen on Earth, some oxygen may have existed before photosynthetic organisms. But, it was thought that the planet's oxygen formed from two oxygen atoms colliding and combining on a surface, not because the oxygen molecules split from carbon dioxide. Meaning that there must be another way to make oxygen, so maybe an alternate way of making oxygen artificially would be better.

When light breaks apart CO2, the molecule normally splits into carbon monoxide (CO) and an oxygen atom (O). (FYI, O2 means 2 oxygen atoms, that's why it's O "2", same with CO2.) One theory was that carbon dioxide could maybe be stripped into molecular oxygen (O2) and carbon (C) instead, but nobody had ever found a process to do this.

Amazingly a researcher, named Ng, and his colleagues built a one-of-a-kind machine to split up carbon dioxide, using UV light in a vacuum. The machine consisted of two lasers, one to split up the CO2, and one to identify the fragments produced. When the researchers shone the first laser on the CO2, the second laser detected O2 molecules and carbon atoms, showing a small amount of carbon dioxide (about 5 percent) was turned into oxygen. Though quite small, that's well enough to show that it's possible to produce oxygen from CO2 by a nonbiological process. Personally I find this absolutely amazing that you can do this without a biological process.

If we could harness the ability to do this an make it a reliable source of oxygen we would never need a tree again, (to produce oxygen, not to house animals.) we could even have scuba/astronaut breathing equipment that makes oxygen endlessly. I now think I would rather try to use the UV light strategy to make oxygen after finding all this out. But there apparently is a problem.

"One reason the experiment hadn't been done before is because of the difficulty of creating intense vacuum ultraviolet light", Ng said. "One way is to use a particle accelerator called a synchrotron, but the laser in my lab is 10,000 to 1 million times brighter than those produced by existing synchrotrons", he said. So maybe that strategy won't work in my lifetime but I hope that in the future humans will be able to make a backup against the people cutting down trees, weather it be a complicated way or not, the world needs its air.