In 1941, Swiss engineer George de Mestral noticed after a hunting trip that burrs from burdock plants stuck to his pants and his dog’s fur.
He took the seed and looked at them through a microscope to find that this seed attaches to animal fur via the hooks on its surface to improve distribution.
Source: All of Nature on Blogspot
These hooks would latch onto anything loop-shaped, such as the fibers in his pants and his dog’s tangled fur. This inspired him to come up with the ‘Velcro’.
Velcro is a bio-mimicry of this burrs with small flexible hooks attached on its surface to attach to fluffy surfaces.
Although it goes by the name Velcro the generic name is a hook-and-loop fastener)
And depending on the load that needs to be held there are different types of hooks that are available:
The sound that the velcro makes when you rip it apart is oddly satisfying. It is made when the loops are ripped apart from the hooks.
It was always in my head that the hooks or the loops would break whenever you would rip it apart. But turns out, they are extremely flexible.
Source
For a long time I believed that this was the end of the story and that’s how far we had gone. But recently when I was trying to mount a board to the wall, I came across the 3M dual lock fasteners.
These use a mushroom shaped hook on both the sides to snap together in place.
Source
And evidently it turns out the mushroom fastener design were inspired from dragonflies who used it for stability during mating (check source video above for more).
This is great, but since this is made of plastic this surely would fail at higher temperatures. You need something robust to handle higher temperatures, and this is where the Metaklett comes into the picture:
A square metre of this fastener, called Metaklett (made of steel), is capable of supporting 35 tonnes at temperatures up to 800 ºC, (Video)
There is something exotic in the blend of nature and technology that is manifested in the Velcro, I just cannot put my hand on what it is.
Have a great day!
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After an extensive talk with a wonderful confidant of mine, I have concluded that “Neat!” is not an appropriate response to an earnest confession of emotions.
“So, like the dolphin, what you really want to do is maximise the fish returns on your dead seagull investment.”
“Don’t forget, breakfast is never just breakfast. Your avocado is never just an avocado.”
All the best stories start with “so I was hanging around with some Armenians in Moscow…”
‘How to not get arrested during field work’ is a vital anthropologist skill.
“Once you create a state it’s really hard to get rid of.”
Accusations of witchcraft roll downhill.
“You don’t want a continual pattern of recessions and depressions, because then your citizens start reading Marx, and you don’t want your citizens reading Marx, because then bad things happen to you.”
Professor: “And what did Columbus bring with him when he set off to sail to India?” Student: “Diseases?”
Good luck on your exams everyone, we’ve almost made it!
Nine relief printed original art greeting cards, each with a unique set of curios/specimens.
The Americas are a big place, but the Native American group that first settled it was small — just about 250 people, according to a new genetic study.
These people, known as a founding group because they “founded” the first population, migrated from Siberia to the Americas by about 15,000 years ago, said study co-lead researcher Nelson Fagundes, a professor in the Department of Genetics at Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil.
Figuring out the size of founding groups is key, because it determines the amount of genetic diversity that gets passed on to the group’s descendants, Fagundes said.
That, in turn, could alter how effectively natural selection weeds out bad genes, Fagundes said.
“Large populations have very efficient selection, while in small populations, mildly deleterious alleles [versions of genes] can spread, which may increase genetic susceptibility to some diseases,” Read more.
What is America’s obsession with Bill Nye the Science Guy I once said in class that I had never seen it and this girl yelled YOU’VE NEVER WATCHED BILL NYE and in 5 seconds flat half the class was screaming HOW COULD YOU HAVE NEVER WATCHED BILL NYE while the other half chanted BILL BILL BILL BILL
1945-1952 - Space Station by Wernher von Braun - Von Braun was a leading aerospace engineer first in Germany until 1945, and after being captued by U.S. forces in the same year, he continued working for NASA in U.S. He made United States able to develop the Saturn/Apollo program, making humans landing on the moon. The pictures here by NASA show one of Wernher von Braun’s fantastic plans, designing a space station for humans. NASA said that “(Wernher von Braun is) without any doubt the greatest rocket scientist in history”. For further details on the space station, please study the following link, adding a lot of details to this concept: http://www.astronautix.com/craft/vonation.htm. The following quote is as well from that website: “In the first 1946 summary of his work during World War II, Wernher von Braun prophesied the construction of space stations in orbit. The design, a toroidal station spun to provide artificial gravity, would be made very familiar to the American public over the next six years. The design was elaborated at the First Symposium on Space Flight on 12 October 1951 at the Hayden Planetarium in New York City. The design was popularized in the series in Colliers magazine, illustrated with gorgeous Chesley Bonestell painting, in 1952. The 1946 version used 20 cylindrical sections, each about 3 m in diameter and 8 m long, to make up the toroid. The whole station was about 50 m in diameter and guy wires connecting and positioning the toroid to the 8 m-diameter central power module. This was equipped with a sun-following solar collector dish to heat fluid in a ball-shaped device. The heated fluid would run an electrical generator. Presumably visiting spacecraft would dock or transfer crew at the base of the power module.”
Once I was made of stardust. Now I am made of flesh and I can experience our agreed-upon reality and said reality is exciting and beautiful and terrifying and full of interesting things to compile on a blog! / 27 / ENTP / they-them / Divination Wizard / B.E.y.O.N.D. department of Research and Development / scientist / science enthusiast / [fantasyd20 character]
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