The Gecko's Foot

People have always based the design of things they make upon structures from the natural world. One might expect us to move away from this as we become more immersed in technology, but in Peter Forbes' new book he shows that on the contrary, new technology has brought new ways of seeing nature, which in turn has lead to new inspiration in engineering. Thus the microscopic bumps on a lotus leaf lead to self-cleaning materials, while the filaments on the gecko's foot promise a new way of sticking things together - the gecko can walk on the ceiling. We also hear about attempts to build minature aircraft, based on the methods of flight used by insects.

The ability to work out the structure of natural proteins using gene sequencing and fast computers has lead several intruiging possibilities, such as new materials based on spider silk. Further ahead there is the possibility of copying the self-assembly of proteins to construct our own nanomachines.

This is Forbes first book aimed at a popular science readership - he has come to science writing from a background in poetry, but thankfully avoids the temptation of making his writing too flowery. Some of the longer chapters seemed to get a bit lost, but on the whole he does an excellent job in making recent technological research accessible to the non-technical reader, and showing that there is not as much of a gap between technology and the natural world as some people might think.