The Superior Engineering of Nature

Nature's spiral as seen in the shell above helped Harman
and Pax Scientific develop their highly efficient impeller

          --madliketesla.com

Jay Harman is a featured engineer in Tyler Hamilton’s book “Mad Like Tesla”  is interested in what we can learn from nature and how designs inspired from nature are highly efficient. This is a key principle of biomimicry which is the "the practice of developing healthier, more sustainable technologies inspired by ideas from Nature." Finding new ways to generate clean electricity is only part of the challenge the world faces. We also need to “use less energy to accomplish the work we desire, and some inventors are taking their cues from nature.”

Harman's  company Pax Scientific is bringing "the exceptional efficiencies of natural flow to fluid-handling technology, such as fans, mixers, pumps, turbines, heat exchangers, ducts, propellers, and other applications." All his designs are built around nature's principals, and have shapes utilized by real living organisms. His domestic exhaust fan is half as noisy and three-quarters more efficient than the average fan. Other designs are 75% more efficient than traditional designs. “If you use three-quarters less energy, then you have three-quarters less pollutants going into the atmosphere." says Harman. It goes to show how Mother Nature has an advantage over humans with a few billion more years of design and efficiency development.

If efficiency of the things we use is one of the main problem of excessive energy consumption. Should investments in improving existing practices and products efficiency's be a priority before we try finding new and expensive ways to provide cleaner energy for them?

Tyler Hamilton has been writing about green tech for the Toronto Star for six years, and recently published “Mad Like Tesla” in 2011. The Scientists featured in mad Tesla, keep trying to change the world, despite "scientific groupthink, bad timing, entrenched corporate interests, misplaced public fear, gaps in available technology, high cost, resource scarcity, personality clashes, lack of financing, resistance to change, complacency, competitive rivalry, misguided policy, lack of vision, and general ignorance."