By Lauren Schroeder, Salt And Lightspeed
Nature has always been a remarkable source of inspiration for human innovation. From the wings of birds inspiring the invention of airplanes to the structure of spider webs informing architectural designs, nature's ingenious solutions have often informed and outperformed human creations.
Engineers have drawn inspiration from natural materials like spider silk, lotus leaves, and gecko feet to create stronger, self-healing materials, water-repellent surfaces, and adhesive technologies.
Humpback whale fins have been used as a model for the development of efficient wind turbines. The swarm patterns of insects have been studied and used to optimize traffic patterns.
The intricate ventilation systems in termite mounds have helped us to build energy-efficient buildings.
Inspiring our kids
This is all great and inspiring… but how do we practically encourage our kids to see what nature has to offer? Below are three ideas to get you started.
Go for a Nature Walk
The best place to start is with simple observation. Going on a nature walk with your kids, without even saying the word “engineering,” is a fantastic way to start.
They will literally be surrounded by thousands of examples of engineering structures that have evolved to optimize strength, stability, and efficient resource distribution.
It’s hard to go out in nature and NOT see streamlined examples of flight, propulsion, and locomotion.
If you look closely, you’ll see beautiful examples of creatures designing and creating structures with specific load-bearing capacities, material selection, and the optimization of space and resources.
Just enjoy. They are running around in the very workshop of the great Engineer of the universe. What more could you ask for?
Look for Patterns
If you want to add a little bit more intentionality into your study of nature, you can look for some specific patterns that show up in many different parts of nature. Here are a few specific patterns to look for:
1. Collect pinecones and look at the bottom. You’ll notice that the pinecone is made up of spirals going both to the left and right. The number of these spirals will be numbers on the fibonacci sequence!
This famous sequence shows up everywhere in nature. Try having your kids paint the spirals different colors to help them see the pattern!
2. Find all the types of seeds you can, and see if you and your child can figure out what mechanisms the seed uses to travel! Do the seeds travel on the wind using wings or hairs that catch the breeze? Do they rely on animals or water to carry them away from their parent plant?
3. Have your child look around and tell you what stands out to them. Is it a red raspberry on a backdrop of green leaves? A yellow daisy? Plants and animals use color contrast for communication or camouflage, or to attract pollinators or repel predators. Talk about why each of those examples might have developed color contrast!
4. Have your child find different shapes - circles, hexagons, spirals, etc - and discuss with them why those shapes might have shown up in that organism or formation in the way they did. Do they capture sunlight the best? Are they strong?
5. Go out in search of an ant’s nest (not fire ants!). Have your child observe how ants communicate with one another. Draw a map of where ants go when they leave a nest. What exactly happens when you put a drop of honey near their nest? The ways ants behave actually shows up quite a bit in software engineering.
6. Make a sundial. Put a stick in the ground. Mark where the shadow reaches every few hours and note the time. Discuss what you can learn about the movement of the earth relative to the sun based on what you observed! How might your shadow change in different seasons?
7. Look at tree rings. We all know rings on a tree show how old the tree is, but did you know that large rings form in warm, wet years and thin rings grow during cold, dry years? Rings with scars on them show that there was a forest fire that year! Find a fallen tree and try to tell its story!
8. Look at the stars in the winter. Draw a picture of the night sky! Another night, draw the same sky. Did anything change? Is the moon a different shape, or did the constellations move? Why might this have happened?
9. Go out in the snow wearing dark gloves or a dark jacket. Have your child look closely and carefully at the snowflakes falling on their clothes! Snowflakes are a great example of 6-fold symmetry.
10. Listen to bird calls. Birds often sing in repeating patterns of songs. Have your child write down the pattern they hear! How often does the song repeat? If they can see the bird, what is it doing?
Invent Something
From Leonardo da Vinci to the Wright Brothers, from spaceships to velcro, inventors and engineers have used the principles they observed in nature to inspire their own engineering breakthroughs.
You can encourage your child to follow in their footsteps. After spending time in nature, observing and finding patterns, encourage your child to create their own invention!
This can be as simple as drawing a pretend helicopter with a maple seed rotor, or as complicated as designing a third world irrigation system based on observations of how water flows.
They can design new clothes that either stand out from their environment, or blend in, and describe what they would be used for.
They can even design a vehicle based on the relatively massive power of a grasshopper. It doesn’t really matter what they create, or how detailed it is. It’s all about nurturing that connection between nature and technology.
By taking a varied, multidisciplinary approach to engineering, and by stepping outside of a textbook and into nature, you can help demonstrate to your child the power of observation and the potential for nature-inspired solutions to shape the future of engineering and design.
By Lauren Schroeder from Salt And Lightspeed | Coding Curriculum
