Engineering and Nature Study

Abstract

It has often been said that there is ‘nothing new under the sun’, and what is usually meant is that the principle is not new, even if the embodiment (to use a patent agent’s phrase) is novel. A simple example is a ball and socket joint which I am sure was invented without reference to the bone structures of the limbs of animals. Gilbert Walton writes’ that such well-used phenomena as those of steam engines and electric currents were abundant in nature long before man was aware of them, but that in the one case they were too small and in the other, too large, for us to notice them. Too small, we can understand. The currents to which he referred were those associated with nerve impulses and our science had to attain a high degree of sophistication before we could possibly become aware of them. But too big! How could we fail to observe something because it was too big? He referred to the vast amounts of water evaporated daily from the sea and deposited high up on the land where its potential energy is available to drive waterwheels and turbines. It is a world-sized steam engine complete with boiler and although the water does not boil, the principle is the same.