5 Ways Biology Is Transforming Buildings

Evolution has reached some pretty outstanding solutions to environmental challenges. It's sort of the ultimate in the fail fast philosophy of engineering. Every mutation is an iteration, and natural selection easily sorts out which designs to pursue. And natural selection has come up with some pretty ingenious solutions.

This video goes through five of those natural solutions and how material scientists are trying to mimic those solutions.

• "Sweat gland cement" - looks at cement blends that contain reinforcing fibers and APP-PER-EN. As the temperature of the modified cement rises, the fibers melt (absorbing energy) then the APP-PER-EN foams and releases gasses to put out fires. Weirdly I can't find anything on the web searching for that APP-PER-EN and cement. I'd appreciate a link to more info if anybody can find it.
• "Polar bear heating" - considers the white fur/black skin combination of polar bear coats. The black skin absorbs heat allowing them to maximize the absorption of heat energy, even leaving them invisible to infrared cameras. German scientists are using a similar idea to adjust the thermal absorption of heat energy for passive solar heating.
• "Homeostasis facades" - are based around muscle fibers expand and contract to regulate heat in the muscles. The facades would be two layers of glass with polymer between them that would expand - blocking sunlight - as they heat up and contract - allowing more sunlight in - as they cool.
• "Mantis shrimp cement" - sees Purdue scientists studying mantis shrimp claw material with its linear structure formed in spiral layers that work as crack arresters. The scientists used a 3d printed concrete structure and printed the layers in spirals similar to the mantis shrimp claw material.
• "Fish scale glass" - takes a look at laminated glass being made more similarly to how fish scales overlap each others. They etched two layers of laminated glass and laminated them together with the diagonal layers flipped to create a diamond-like pattern that makes the glass much stronger than leaving the etchings in the same direction.