From csmonitor.com: Plants teach big lessons about how to get going.
Engineers who want to design devices that move quickly should consult with plants. Our green friends have evolved in simple ways to make some of the fastest movements known in nature.
Take the Venus' flytrap. It snaps up its prey in a few tenths of a second. The title of "fastest plant on Earth," however, goes to the bunchberry dogwood. When launching its pollen, this tiny plant moves more than 100 times as fast as the flytrap.
A fresh look at such familiar but poorly understood phenomena would uncover a treasure trove of examples to fire a designer's imagination, says Harvard mechanical engineer Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan. In January, Professor Mahadevan and several colleagues published in Nature the first detailed description of how the Venus' flytrap snaps. It's a simple system based on hydrologic pressure and release of pent-up elastic energy.
When resting, the two leaves of the hinged trap bend outward in a concave shape. The trap is open to admit unsuspecting insects. When an intruding fly trips trigger hairs inside the trap, movement of fluid within leaf cells builds up elastic strains in the leaf. When the leaves can no longer sustain the strains, they snap into their other stable shape, curving inward to form a concave enclosure. Voilá! A trapped insect and a tasty meal. [continue]
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