Earlier this year, I delivered my inaugural lecture in the superb setting of the Manufacturing Engineering Centre in Coventry to an audience of family, friends, colleagues and fellow members of the Royal Academy of Engineering. Inaugural lectures are occasions for new university chair holders to tell people about their work and research interests. Regular readers of this column might have gathered that, having been a professor for 25 years, I was not exactly a new chair holder. However, to my current institution, the University of Birmingham, I was still a relative novice as I had rejoined it just two years ago.
For the topic of my talk, I chose Engineering Nature — the design and creation of engineering devices and systems to replicate certain features, properties, functions or behaviours found in nature. This reflected well both what I had been doing and what had proved professionally most fascinating to me. The talk covered a variety of subjects ranging from plants to planes, and from bees, bats and beetles to brains, bots and the Bionic Woman.
The first example I gave of a natural property much discussed among researchers in micro and nano technology was the lotus effect. As many readers will know, the surface of the lotus leaf, which on a macroscopic scale appears smooth, is in fact rather uneven at a micro and nano level. Some quite straightforward mathematics can show that the micro/nano roughness of the surface allows droplets of water to roll off it and pick up dirt particles as they do so.
This hydrophobicity helps to keep the surface of the lotus leaf dry and clean. It explains why these leaves are used in some parts of the world for applications, such as food wrapping and containing, where dryness and cleanliness are essential. Man-made surfaces with this very high water repellence have been created by mimicking the micro/nano structure of the lotus leaf surface.
What was of personal interest to me was the connection between the lotus and my childhood, for when I was a young boy, my parents used to recite a folk poem about that magical plant that grew in dirty and smelly water, yet was clean and still kept its beautiful scent. Clumsily translated into English, the poem read: “In the pond, nothing is prettier than the lotus, with its green leaves, white petals and yellow stamina. The flower thrives in swamps, unaffected by all the mud around it.”
Now, to the link with Tony, our estate agent. As many home buyers and sellers can testify, estate agents are not known to be a particularly honest and trustworthy breed. That is with the exception of Tony, who is also a star of the TV Programme “Homes Under the Hammer”. Despite the very difficult housing market over the past three years, Tony and his colleagues in our local estate agency in Cardiff where we used to live have behaved in an impeccably ethical manner, providing sound professional advice to both sellers and buyers and never making exaggerated claims in order to try and secure a sale.
How about Cliff Richard, the pop singer, musician, performer and actor? Again, as we all know, pop singers and famous stars are generally not famous for their good behaviour. That is with the exception of Sir Cliff. He is perhaps one of the most unassuming, modest and friendly people one could meet. Despite his superstar status, he has a regular person’s manners that immediately put people at ease. He does charity work and has led a model life without any of the scandals that have beset many of his peers.
I trust it is now evident what the lotus, Tony and Sir Cliff have in common. May they continue to thrive in the muddy waters that surround them. More importantly, may the waters surrounding them become somewhat cleaner as a result.