Nature's Wild Ideas
eBook - ePub

Nature's Wild Ideas

How the Natural World is Inspiring Scientific Innovation

  1. English
  2. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Nature's Wild Ideas

How the Natural World is Inspiring Scientific Innovation

About this book

A lively and endlessly fascinating deep-dive into nature and the many groundbreaking human inventions inspired by the wild.

"Delightful."— The Guardian

"Fans of Helen Scales won't want to miss this."— Publishers Weekly STARRED Review

When astronomers wanted a telescope that could capture X-rays from celestial bodies, they looked to the lobster. When doctors wanted a medication that could stabilize Type II diabetic patients, they found their muse in a lizard. When scientists wanted to drastically reduce emissions in cement manufacturing, they observed how corals construct their skeletons in the sea. This is biomimicry in action: taking inspiration from nature to tackle human challenges.

In Nature's Wild Ideas, Kristy Hamilton goes behind the scenes of some of our most unexpected innovations. She traverses frozen waterfalls, treks through cloudy forests, discovers nests in the Mojave desert, scours intertidal zones and takes us to the deepest oceans and near volcanoes to introduce us to the animals and plants that have inspired everything from cargo routing systems to non-toxic glues, and the men and women who followed that first spark of "I wonder" all the way to its conclusion, sometimes against all odds.

While the joy of scientific discovery is front and center, Nature's Wild Ideas is also a love letter to nature—complete with a deep message of conservation: If we are to continue learning from the creatures around us, we must protect their untamed homelands.

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Yes, you can access Nature's Wild Ideas by Kristy Hamilton in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Biological Sciences & Ecology. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Contents
  5. Introduction
  6. 1 A Cold Case
  7. 2 Fishing for Stars
  8. 3 Drinking From a Cloud
  9. 4 Who’s in Charge?
  10. 5 A Leggy Turn of Events
  11. 6 Bonding With Nature
  12. 7 Concrete Evidence
  13. 8 Driving on a Seed
  14. 9 Skeletons in the Closet
  15. 10 A Monster is Born
  16. 11 Bumps are Beautiful
  17. 12 Window Pain
  18. 13 Flashes of Brilliance
  19. Conclusion
  20. Acknowledgments
  21. Notes
  22. Bibliography
  23. Index
  24. Copyright Page