- Use energy more wisely using nature as a guide
- Geese flying in a formation and schools of fish swimming in the ocean show us how to utilize energy efficiently.
- Did you know that the amount of energy that falls from the sun for 1.5 hours is more than what all the humans on earth consume in a day?
It's a known fact that all living things on earth depend upon this sunlight either directly or indirectly and it seems odd that nature puts such a premium on efficient use of energy.
Each living being makes the best use of the essential sunlight without using a drop.
The leaves of plants are tunes down to the subatomic level for gathering as much light as they can.
Whenever a life form takes in fuel - in-direct form like a blade of grass or indirectly as when the grazing animals eat that blade of grass a lot of energy is required to turn it into something usable. trees, insects, birds, flowers keep multiplying to keep life flowing utilising this energy and those species that prove best at efficient utilisation of energy live longest and live best.
Whoever masters, what jack Gladstone calls harmony, balance and rhythm, will have a successful life.
Harmony can be understood as not pushing against whatever is happening at that moment but rather adjusting to moving with the flow. A duck caught in a fierce headwind may land and wait for a more favourable condition rather than exhaust itself.
Balance is striving for an equilibrium between energy coming in and energy going out. The duck, for example, may fill itself up with food (grains) and gain energy for the exertion of the flight.
Rhythm includes the daily, seasonal and lifetime cycles, creating alternating beats of strong activity and silent restoration. A bear during winter, when food is scarce, will crawl into a den and lower its metabolism to minimal levels and sleep until spring - hibernate.
Right now there are approximately 60000 mammals, birds, reptiles, fishes and more than 300000 types of plants. All of them have survived and prospered by building a life of outstanding efficiency using harmony, balance and rhythm. Living things are continuously investing in energy to make more of it.
Our body cells have an efficient way of burning up the sugar from the food we eat in tiny steps and some of it is stored in carrier modules available for later use. If all this energy is released at once, only a part of it would be used by the cells and the excess would go to waste in the form of heat. Imagine a person trying to keep warm through the entire night with a campfire. It's better to feed the log when needed rather than dumping the entire woodpile at once.
Look at the flock of birds flying in the sky in a familiar "V" formation. Drafting allows the birds following the lead bird to benefit from the aerodynamic wash-up avoiding headwinds and also gaining lift from the birds in front. Each bird will take the lead slot for the same amount of time and they will spend the rest of the time drafting behind other birds - rotating from the head up to the back then moving up again bird by bird. The lead bird does a delicate dance of body adjustment balancing, always minimising the energy spent by leaning into and out of subtle wind currents. Whenever possible they will drop down to the lower valleys taking advantage of greater air density which allows them to catch more air with every wing stroke. when the time comes they will once again rise together to cross the high mountains.
This constant change in the formation is partly accomplished by a form of communication, a throaty honk, you hear. This is also a way of checking on the flock between the leader and the back of the flock. Should one of the birds struggle or become injured typically it will fall out of the formation along with 2-3 with it and go down to the ground level to recuperate.
This "V" formation was used successfully in world war II for the first time, to gain lift, to reduce headwinds and minimise the energy required to travel and also to keep each other in visual contact.
In the case of schools of fish, the head fish propels itself by twisting its body to create small eddies and whirlpools. the trailing fish wrap their bodies around these disturbances in water and get pulled along.
learning from this a group of students from California assembled vertical wind turbines in tightly packed groups like schools of fish and this produced a phenomenal 10 fold increase of wind power.
As Chinese philosopher observed " The way of nature is to take from what has an excess to make good what is efficient"
from the new book The Eight Master Lessons of Nature: What Nature Teaches Us About Living Well in the World by Gary Ferguson
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