The Geckos Foot

Download or read book The Gecko’s Foot: How Scientists are Taking a Leaf from Nature's Book written by Peter Forbes and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2010-10-07 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cutting-edge science book in the style of ‘Fermat’s Last Theorem’ and ‘Chaos’ from an exciting and accessible voice in popular science writing.

Download or read book The Gecko's Foot written by Peter Forbes and published by W W Norton & Company Incorporated. This book was released on 2005 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An analysis of the unlikely relationship between nature and scientific design reveals how such innovations as Velcro, solar panels, and self-cleaning surfaces were created to mimic intricate mechanisms found in the natural world.

Download or read book The Gecko's Foot written by Peter Forbes and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2006 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new science of bio-inspiration is going to produce a plethora of products over the next decades that will transform our lives and force us to look at the world in a completely new way. This is an assessment of how cutting edge science is borrowing ideas from nature to create the inventions of tomorrow.

Download or read book The Gecko's Foot written by Peter Forbes and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cutting-edge science book in the style of Fermat s Last Theorem and Chaos from an exciting and accessible new voice in popular science writing. Bio-inspiration is a form of engineering but not in the conventional sense. Extending beyond our established and preconceived notions, scientists, architects and engineers are looking at imitating nature by manufacturing 'wet' materials such as spider silk or the surface of the gecko's foot. The amazing power of the gecko's foot has long been known it can climb a vertical glass wall and even walk upside down on the ceiling but no ideas could be harnessed from it because its mechanism could not be seen with the power of optical microscopes. Recently however the secret was solved by a team of scientists in Oregon who established that the mechanism really is dry, and that it does not involve suction, capillary action or anything else the lay person might imagine. Each foot has half a million bristles and each bristle ramifies into hundreds of finer spatula-shaped projections. The fine scale of the gecko's foot is beyond the capacity of conventional microengineering, but a team of nanotechnologists have already made a good initial approximation. The gecko's foot is just one of many examples of this new 'smart' science. We also discover, amongst other things, how George de Mestral's brush with the spiny fruits of the cocklebur inspired him to invent Velcro; how the shape of leaves opening from a bud has inspired the design of solar-powered satellites; and the parallels between cantilever bridges and the spines of large mammals such as the bison. The new 'smart' science of Bio-inspiration is going to produce a plethora of products over the next decades that will transform our lives, and force us to look at the world in a completely new way. It is science we will be reading about in our papers very soon; it is the science of tomorrow's world."

Download or read book Right from the Gecko written by Cynthia Baxter and published by Bantam. This book was released on 2007-03-27 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surf’s up . . . and so are the stakes when veterinarian and amateur sleuth Jessica Popper escapes to the land of hula, hibiscus, and geckos for a professional conference. The last time she and boyfriend Nick Burby touched down on the island of Hawaii, Nick caused a volcanic eruption when he unexpectedly popped The Question to commitment-phobic Jess. But this trip proves just as dangerous when Jess befriends an ambitious young reporter whose body later washes up on the sand . . . and someone thinks Jess holds the clue to the killer’s motive. There’s no end of suspects among the exotic flora and fauna, from the victim’s journalistic rivals and a mystery boyfriend to an eccentric beachcomber and a governor’s aide with ties to a controversial biotech firm bringing progress to paradise. One of them is a killer with the chameleon-like ability to stay hidden—and if Jessica doesn’t uncover hula-dunnit in time, she’ll be saying aloha . . . permanently.

Download or read book Geckos Surf written by and published by Beachhouse Pub.. This book was released on 2007-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A fun little board book celebrating Hawaii's silly little geckos. The smallest child will love following their goofy antics int his fun rhyme illustrated by local artist Jon J. Murakami.

Download or read book Nanotribology and Nanomechanics written by Bharat Bhushan and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2006-01-27 with total page 1157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent emergence and proliferation of proximal probes, e.g. SPM and AFM, and computational techniques for simulating tip-surface interactions has enabled the systematic investigation of interfacial problems on ever smaller scales, as well as created means for modifying and manipulating nanostructures. In short, they have led to the appearance of the new, interdisciplinary fields of micro/nanotribology and micro/nanomechanics. This volume serves as a timely, practical introduction to the principles of nanotribology and nanomechanics and applications to magnetic storage systems and MEMS/NEMS. Assuming some familiarity with macrotribology/mechanics, the book comprises chapters by internationally recognized experts, who integrate knowledge of the field from the mechanics and materials-science perspectives. They cover key measurement techniques, their applications, and theoretical modelling of interfaces, each beginning their contributions with macro- and progressing to microconcepts. After reviewing the fundamental experimental and theoretical aspects in the first part, Nanotribology and Nanomechanics then treats applications. Three groups of readers are likely to find this text valuable: graduate students, research workers, and practicing engineers. It can serve as the basis for a comprehensive, one- or two-semester course in scanning probe microscopy; applied scanning probe techniques; or nanotribology/nanomechanics/nanotechnology, in departments such as mechanical engineering, materials science, and applied physics. With a Foreword by Physics Nobel Laureate Gerd Binnig Dr. Bharat Bhushan is an Ohio Eminent Scholar and The Howard D. Winbigler Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Graduate Research Faculty Advisor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the Director of the Nanotribology Laboratory for Information Storage & MEMS/NEMS (NLIM) at the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio. He is an internationally recognized expert of tribology and mechanics on the macro- to nanoscales, and is one of the most prolific authors. He is considered by some a pioneer of the tribology and mechanics of magnetic storage devices and a leading researcher in the fields of nanotribology and nanomechanics using scanning probe microscopy and applications to micro/nanotechnology. He is the recipient of various international fellowships including the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize for Senior Scientists, Max Planck Foundation Research Award for Outstanding Foreign Scientists, and the Fulbright Senior Scholar Award.