Visual Argument

Click for my visual argument on biomimicry.
claim: We should care about the relationship between nature and technology.
reason: Because nature offers inspiration to engineers wanting to improve their designs. Improved designs mean a higher standard of living.
warrant: Assuming "we" are interested in science and engineering.

1. I chose the pictures because they are successful examples of biomimicry, and they are more recent than, say, Da Vinci's sketch of a flying machine inspired by birds. My examples are of things that can be seen today, which makes them relatable to the audience. My target audience is modern, cares about the future, and is interested in both technology and nature. The pictures argue that the audience should care about the topic of biomimicry.
2.
shark skin and swim suit: The new olympic racing suits are made out of a material that reduces drag. It was inspired by the pattern of microscopic scales in shark skin.
leaf and solar panel: Solar panels absorb light for energy like a leaf absorbs light to indirectly produce energy.
kingfisher and train: The noses of fast trains were made into the elongated shape of a kingfisher's beak. The bird's beak allows it to smoothly dive from air into water. The train's new nose allows it to zoom from open air into a tunnel without making a big "splash".
whale flipper and wind turbine: Like the ridges on a whale flipper are hydrodynamic, ridges on a wind turbine are aerodynamic. The ridges make turbines quieter and more efficient.
termite mound and building: The design of a termite mound creates ventilation and a constant temperature naturally. An architect applied nature's design to a building and decreased heating and cooling costs by 90%.
burr and velcro: Velcro was inspired by burrs. In this case a natural inconvenience inspired a synthetic convenience. (Now if they could only get rid of the annoying sound...)
hummingbird and robot spy hummingbird: This is perhaps the most recent, expensive, and cool example out of all of my pictures. Rather than taking a single idea from nature, nature was painstakingly copied. This example functions as a sort of grand finale of awesomeness.

I included two birds, two fish, two plants, and one structure. The repetition of similar organisms for different uses is meant to show just how much there is to learn. A fish doesn't just teach us how to swim, and a bird doesn't just teach us how to fly. While all examples benefit people, the solar panel, wind turbine, and building also deal with clean energy and the conservation of it, which benefits nature. For many examples, I found an image that had both the creation and the inspiration on it. For the others I put the inspiration first and the creation following. Two separate image examples are put at the front to act as an intro, and one is put at the end to be a conclusion. The first image of the shark is unique because the bubbles show the real skin on the shark and the fake skin on the suit. If the skin had not been magnified, the audience wouldn't understand the connection between the shark and the suit.

3. This is one of the animoto songs. The lyrics go perfectly with the images. "Our world is beautiful" for the shark, "it moves my soul" for the train, and "I'd be nothing without you" repeated in a kind of fading echo. Unfortunately, the tinkling (I don't know how else to describe it) is really annoying. An instrumental might have been a better choice. My computer wouldn't let me put my own music on, did that happen to anyone else?