A little move of Lotus unexpectedly revealed so much.

In summer, the lotus mode immediately opened, and the squirrel also opened the popular science mode. Today, I won't talk about lotus, because I said it in detail last year. I don't remember that I doubled the historical records and found a lot of new discoveries. What we want to talk about this time is a special phenomenon that both lotus flowers and lotus flowers will have, the lotus effect that comes out of the mud without being stained.

The principle of a drop of water on the leaf surface

Apart from appreciating the lotus, have you ever noticed the lotus leaf? Oh, don't think of lotus leaf chicken, nor is it lotus leaf fried rice. It is that water droplets fall on lotus leaves and lotus leaves and turn into water droplets that roll freely, and water droplets can also take away the dust on the leaves when rolling.

Yes, this droplet detail is the lotus effect. As early as the 1970s, the German botany Bartlett discovered the little secret in the pond. The surface of lotus leaves looks simple, but in fact there are very complex ultrastructures at the nanometer and micron level.

Through the electron microscope, it can be found that there are some waxy particles on the leaf surface, which are covered with numerous 10-micron unit-level packets, and the surface of each package is covered with nano-scale fine villi. The size of the water droplet is much larger than this foliar structure. When the water droplets fall, we think they are falling on the leaves, but in the micro world, there is a lot of air in the depressions of the droplets. the water droplets actually fall on a very thin layer of air on the complex structure of the leaves, and can only touch the convex starting point of those droplets, so you will find that the breeze is coming, and the water droplets seem to leave the leaves of the tree and fall to the ground.

This phenomenon is the result of the long-term evolution of organisms in nature, but do not think that it is simply a kind of self-cleaning ability, and it is also of great significance to prevent the invasion of pathogens. Like the lotus flower, it grows in a silt-free environment, where the "mud" environment is filled with damp and rotten smell. as soon as bacteria are inadvertently propagated, the plant is bound to be caught if it does not have the ultrastructure, thanks to the lotus effect. Plants in these harsh environments are able to survive.

Nature can be seen everywhere in the biological world

This kind of surface ultramicro nanostructure with self-cleaning ability exists not only in lotus leaves, but also in other plants. For example, duckweed, rushes, reeds of aquatic plants, gray vegetables, moxa grass, rice, white chrysanthemum and so on in herbs. In addition, the wings of winged insects also have these ultrastructures. Dragonflies, bees, moths, butterflies, cicadas, etc., all have ultrastructures of different shapes on their wings, so that timely cleaning does not affect flight.

Small units change big life and society

Scientists have not been idle, imitating the lotus leaf effect, applied to the surface nanostructure technology, developed a self-cleaning anti-fouling nano-coating. After nano-treatment of glass, has a self-cleaning effect, this technical innovation is afraid that the glassworker will disappear from our field of vision. Floors and walls that won't get dirty, benefits for housewives.

The addition of nanostructures to the fibers of clothes can make ordinary clothes have the function of self-cleaning, turning into Superman Spiderman for minutes, and more importantly, perhaps changing the habit of washing clothes with a lot of detergent, throwing it into the washing machine only need to turn on the rinsing mode, which greatly saves time and alleviates the aggravation of water pollution.

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