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The Geckoâ€™s Foot: How Scientists are Taking a Leaf from Nature's Book

By (author) Peter Forbes

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normal price: R 290.95

Price: R 261.95

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A cutting-edge science book in the style of â€˜Fermatâ€™s Last Theoremâ€™ and â€˜Chaosâ€™ from an exciting and accessible new voice in popular science writing. Bio-inspiration is a form of engineering but not in the conventional sense. Extending beyond our established and preconceived notions, scientists, architects and engineers are looking at imitating nature by manufacturing 'wet' materials such as spider silk or the surface of the gecko's foot. The amazing power of the gecko's foot has long been known â€“ it can climb a vertical glass wall and even walk upside down on the ceiling â€“ but no ideas could be harnessed from it because its mechanism could not be seen with the power of optical microscopes. Recently however the secret was solved by a team of scientists in Oregon who established that the mechanism really is dry, and that it does not involve suction, capillary action or anything else the lay person might imagine. Each foot has half a million bristles and each bristle ramifies into hundreds of finer spatula-shaped projections. The fine scale of the gecko's foot is beyond the capacity of conventional microengineering, but a team of nanotechnologists have already made a good initial approximation. The gecko's foot is just one of many examples of this new 'smart' science. We also discover, amongst other things, how George de Mestral's brush with the spiny fruits of the cocklebur inspired him to invent Velcro; how the shape of leaves opening from a bud has inspired the design of solar-powered satellites; and the parallels between cantilever bridges and the spines of large mammals such as the bison. The new 'smart' science of Bio-inspiration is going to produce a plethora of products over the next decades that will transform our lives, and force us to look at the world in a completely new way. It is science we will be reading about in our papers very soon; it is the science of tomorrow's world.

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Normally shipped | Available from overseas. Usually dispatched in 14 days
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Normal Price | R 321.95
Price | R 289.95 | on special |

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Normally shipped | Usually dispatched in 3 to 6 weeks as supplier is out of stock
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Normal Price | R 420.95
Price | R 378.95 | on special |

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Alex Michaelides
Paperback / softback
352 pages
was: R 280.95
now: R 252.95
Usually dispatched in 6-12 days

With film rights snapped up by an Oscar winning Hollywood production company, rights sold in a world record 43 territories, and rave blurbs from David Baldacci, Lee Child and A.

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Free Your Mind: The new world of manipulation and how to resist it

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Paperback / softback
384 pages
was: R 300.95
now: R 270.95
Forthcoming

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The Thing at 52

Mr. Ross Montgomery
Hardback
40 pages
was: R 392.95
now: R 353.95
Usually dispatched in 3 to 4 weeks as supplier is out of stock

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