Chemistry Project

Joshua Riding

How Nature Cures a Thirsty World

Even termites have helped us because of the way that they build their homes and architect saw this and then used it to make some of the buildings in Harare, Zimbabwe.  He built the building in a way that was almost exactly like the way termites make their homes. Nature has taught us many things to remake them or improve them or make totally hair brain ideas into reality. But we aren’t talking about buildings. We are talking about water something that some people can get and some cannot the air contains more than three quadrillion gallons of water and the Namib Desert beetle can help us collect that water.

The Namib Desert beetle lives in an area that only gets half an inch of rainfall per year. Yet it drinks 12 percent of its weight in water, it collects the water from climbing to the top of a sand dune and it then sticks its butt up in the air, back to the wind and collects the water as stated by Deckard Sorensen stated by pri.org. Sorensen is a co-founder of NBD with a background in bio mimicry. Sorensen has a degree in Biology with a concentration in bioinformatics from Boston College as stated by NBD Nano. This happens because a wind that blows across the desert has moisture in it; it saves the desert and its inhabitants. However, there will always be moisture in the air even though there are only little amounts in this desert but, still this little beetle can collect water for itself with the hydrophilic bumps on its back it collects the water from this very helpful breeze as stated in article made on asknature.org. But why would this help us how can we use the beetle to help us well Sorensen has found a way.

All that is needed is an idea and an inspiration, Sorensen had the idea and found the inspiration. He says he has found a way to create from 1 to 3 liters of water within one hour with the nanotechnology that they have using super hydrophobic and super hydrophilic coating on a bottle with a fan on it. The fan then makes the wind that the beetle gets water from in the desert, the air goes through the bottle allowing the water in the air to stick to the hydrophobic, coating and go into the bottle. Sorensen and his team say that it could be applied to enhanced dehumidification for house-hold consumers, production of portable water for military operations, production of water for greenhouses to support plant life, and production of potable water for third world nation as stated by NBD Nano.

Using super hydrophobic and super hydrophilic coating they can get 1 to 3 liters of water now what is super hydrophobic and super hydrophilic? Hydrophobic materials are things that don’t like water; the hydrophobic molecules are non-polar and attract non-polar objects to it such as a non-polar covalent bond which only happens when electrons share the bond evenly. For instance oil it is a hydrophobic material you try and put it in water and it will not mix with the water. Hydrophilic materials are things that love water and it love being near it, they are polar and so attract polar objects such as sugar. Sugar is a hydrophilic material because it likes water because it dissolves in water it gets absorbed into the water instead of sitting on top of the water not willing to dissolve in it. The Nano technology that NBD Nano is mimicking the Beetle’s back which uses hydrophilic material to collect the water.

 Chemistry of materials have changed a lot in history and it is amazing how some of the findings are just an accident and some aren't. But, as chemistry of materials have shaped our past and present I believe that they will always shape our future. I can see it shaping our future with a bigger development in technology in phones and computers. A chemical structure of a material can determine if it is malleable if it is brittle.