Flies are spreaders of bacteria, and everyone hates them. However, the fly's wings (also called balance rods) are "natural navigators", and people imitated them to make "vibrating gyroscopes". This kind of instrument has been used in rockets and high-speed aircraft to realize automatic driving. The fly's eye is a kind of "compound eye", consisting of more than 3000 small eyes. People imitate it to make "fly eye lenses". A "fly's eye lens" is made up of hundreds or thousands of small lenses arranged neatly together. Using it as a lens can be used to make a "fly's eye camera", which can take thousands of the same photos at one time. This kind of camera has been used in printing plate making and large-scale reproduction of tiny circuits in electronic computers, greatly improving work efficiency and quality. The "fly's eye lens" is a new type of optical component that has many uses.
Birds can fly freely in the air with their wings spread. According to "Han Feizi", Lu Ban made a bird out of bamboo and wood, and "it flew and stayed there for three days." However, people hope to imitate the wings of birds so that they can fly in the air. As early as more than four hundred years ago, Italian Leonardo da Vinci and his assistants carefully dissected birds, studied their body structures and carefully observed their flight. Designed and built an ornithopter, the world's first man-made flying machine.
During the First World War, out of military necessity, submarines were built to enable ships to sail covertly underwater. When engineers and technicians designed the original submarine, they first loaded the submarine with stones or lead blocks to make it sink. If they needed to rise to the surface, they would throw away the stones or lead blocks and let the boat return to the surface. Come to the water. Later, after improvements, the method of alternately filling and draining pontoons with water was used on submarines to change the weight of the submarine. Later, it was changed to a ballast water tank. A release valve was installed on the upper part of the water tank and a water filling valve was installed below. When the water tank was filled with seawater, the weight of the hull increased, allowing it to submerge into the water. When an emergency dive is needed, there is also a speed diving chamber. After the boat body is submerged in the water, the seawater in the speed diving chamber is discharged. If one part of the ballast tank is filled with water and the other part is empty, the submarine can be semi-submerged. When the submarine wants to float, compressed air is passed into the water tank to discharge the seawater. After the weight of the seawater in the boat is reduced, the submarine can float. Such a superior mechanical device enables the submarine to sink and float freely. But later it was discovered that the sinking and floating system of fish is much simpler than people's invention. The sinking and floating system of fish is just an inflated swim bladder. The swim bladder is not controlled by muscles, but relies on secreting oxygen into the swim bladder or reabsorbing part of the oxygen in the swim bladder to adjust the gas content in the swim bladder, allowing the fish to sink and float freely. However, it was too late to inspire and help submarine designers with such an ingenious sinking and floating system of fish.
For a long time, living things have lived in nature surrounded by sound. They use sound to find food, escape from enemies, court and reproduce. Therefore, sound is an important information for living things to survive. The Italian Spallanzani discovered long ago that bats can fly freely in complete darkness, avoiding obstacles and preying on insects in flight. However, after blocking the ears of bats, they will be unable to move in the dark. . Faced with these facts, Palanzani came up with a conclusion that is difficult for people to accept: bats can "see" with their ears. After the First World War, in 1920 Hardy believed that the frequency of the sound signals emitted by bats was beyond the hearing range of the human ear. He also proposed that the bat's target positioning method is the same as the ultrasonic echo positioning method invented by Langevin during World War I. Unfortunately, Hardy's tip went unnoticed, and engineers found it hard to believe that bats had "echolocation" technology. It wasn't until the use of electronic measuring instruments in 1983 that it was completely confirmed that bats locate themselves by emitting ultrasonic waves. But this no longer helped with the early inventions of radar and sonar.
Another example is the study of insect behavior that came too late. 400 years after Leonardo da Vinci studied bird flight and built the first aircraft, after long-term and repeated practice, people finally invented the airplane in 1903, allowing mankind to realize their dream of flying into the sky.
Due to continuous improvement, 30 years later, human aircraft surpassed birds in terms of speed, altitude and flying distance, showing human wisdom and talent. However, when continuing to develop aircraft that fly faster and higher, designers encountered another problem, which was the flutter phenomenon in aerodynamics. When an airplane flies, harmful vibrations occur in its wings. The faster it flies, the stronger the flutter of the wings becomes, even causing the wings to break, causing the airplane to crash, and many test pilots lost their lives. Aircraft designers spent a lot of effort to eliminate harmful flutter phenomena, and it took a long time to find a solution to this problem. A weighting device placed just far from the leading edge of the wing eliminates harmful vibrations. However, insects have been flying in the air as early as 300 million years ago, and they are no exception to the harm of flutter. After a long period of evolution, insects have successfully obtained methods to prevent flutter. When biologists were studying dragonfly wings, they discovered that there was a dark, thickened horny area above the leading edge of each wing - a wing eye or wing nevus. If the wing eyes were removed, flight would become erratic. Experiments have proven that it is the horny tissue of the wing eye that eliminates the harm of flutter in the wings of dragonfly flying. This is very similar to the designer's superb invention. If designers first learn the function of wing eyes from insects and obtain design ideas that are beneficial to solving flutter, they can avoid long-term exploration and personnel sacrifices. Facing the eyes of dragonfly wings, aircraft designers feel as if they have met at a late date!
The annoying flies seem to have nothing to do with the magnificent aerospace industry, but bionics has closely linked them.
Flies are notorious as "stinky hunters", and they can be found in any smelly and dirty place. Flies have a particularly sensitive sense of smell and can detect odors thousands of meters away. But a fly does not have a "nose", so how does it rely on its sense of smell? It turns out that the fly's "nose" - olfactory receptors are distributed on a pair of antennae on the head.
Each "nose" has only one "nostril" connected to the outside world, which contains hundreds of olfactory nerve cells. If an odor enters the "nostrils", these nerves immediately convert the odor stimulation into nerve electrical impulses and send them to the brain. The brain can distinguish different odor substances based on the difference in nerve electrical impulses generated by different odor substances. Therefore, the fly's antennae act like a sensitive gas analyzer.
Bionicists were inspired by this and successfully imitated a very peculiar small gas analyzer based on the structure and function of the fly's olfactory organ. The "probe" of this instrument is not a metal but a live fly. It is to insert very thin microelectrodes into the olfactory nerves of flies, and amplify the electrical nerve signals guided by electronic circuits and send them to the analyzer; once the analyzer detects the signal of odorous substances, it can sound an alarm. This instrument has been installed in the cockpit of the spacecraft to detect the composition of the gas inside the cabin.
This small gas analyzer can also measure harmful gases in submarines and mines. Using this principle, it can also be used to improve the input device of the computer and the structural principles of the gas chromatography analyzer.
Since humans invented the electric light, life has become much more convenient and rich. However, electric lamps can only convert a small part of the electrical energy into visible light, and most of the rest is wasted in the form of heat energy, and the heat rays of electric lamps are harmful to human eyes. So, is there a light source that only emits light but does not generate heat? Human beings have turned their attention to nature again.
In nature, there are many organisms that can emit light, such as bacteria, fungi, worms, molluscs, crustaceans, insects and fish, etc., and the light emitted by these animals does not produce heat, so it Known as "cold light".
Among the many luminous animals, fireflies are one of them. There are about 1,500 species of fireflies. The colors of the cold light they emit range from yellow-green to orange, and the brightness of the light also varies. The cold light emitted by fireflies not only has high luminous efficiency, but also the cold light emitted is generally very soft, which is very suitable for human eyes, and the light intensity is relatively high. Therefore, biolight is an ideal light for humans.
Scientists have discovered that fireflies’ light emitters are located on their abdomens.
This light emitter consists of three parts: a luminescent layer, a transparent layer and a reflective layer. The luminescent layer contains thousands of luminescent cells, all of which contain luciferin and luciferase. Under the action of luciferase, luciferin combines with oxygen to emit fluorescence with the participation of intracellular water. The glow of fireflies is essentially the process of converting chemical energy into light energy.
As early as the 1940s, people created fluorescent lamps based on research on fireflies, which brought about great changes in human lighting sources. In recent years, scientists first isolated pure luciferin from the light emitters of fireflies, then isolated luciferase, and then used chemical methods to artificially synthesize luciferin. A biological light source mixed with luciferin, luciferase, ATP (adenosine triphosphate) and water can be used as a flashlight in mines filled with explosive gas. Since this kind of light has no power source and does not generate a magnetic field, it can be used to clear magnetic mines under the illumination of biological light sources.
Nowadays, people can obtain cold light similar to biological light by mixing certain chemical substances, which can be used as safety lighting.
There are many creatures in nature that can produce electricity, including more than 500 species of fish alone. People refer to these fish that can discharge electricity as "electric fish".
Various electric fish have different abilities to discharge electricity. The ones with the strongest discharge ability are electric rays, electric catfish and electric eels. A medium-sized electric ray can produce about 70 volts, while the African electric ray can produce up to 220 volts; the African electric catfish can produce 350 volts; the electric eel can produce 500 volts, and there is a South American electric eel. It can produce a voltage of up to 880 volts, making it the electric shock champion. It is said that it can kill large animals like horses.
What is the secret of electric fish discharge? After anatomical research on electric fish, it was finally discovered that there is a strange power-generating organ in the body of electric fish. These generators are made of many translucent disk-shaped cells called electroplates or electrodisks. Because there are different types of electric fish, the shape, location, and number of electric panels of the generator are different. The electric eel's generator is prismatic and is located in the muscles on both sides of the spine at the tail; the electric ray's generator is shaped like a flat kidney, arranged on both sides of the body's midline, with a total of 2 million electric plates; the electric catfish's generator Originating from some kind of gland, located between the skin and muscles, there are about 5 million electrical plates. The voltage generated by a single electric plate is very weak, but because there are many electric plates, the voltage generated is very large.
The extraordinary ability of electric fish has aroused great interest among people. In the early 19th century, Italian physicist Volta designed the world's earliest voltaic battery using the electric fish's power-generating organ as a model. Because this battery is designed based on the natural generator of electric fish, it is called an "artificial electric organ." Research on electric fish has also given people this revelation: If the power-generating organ of electric fish can be successfully imitated, then the power problems of ships and submarines can be well solved.