Nanoscience has the reason why sharks swims                                           so fast when they are hunting!!!!

Sharks are one of the deadliest sea creatures, they have evolved in a way to have all the required feature to be known as perfect killer machine. So, what makes them swim so fast? Its the skin, basically the different shaped scales which let the water move through the grooves easily and makes them swin fast.

Shark skin covered by very small individual tooth-like scales ribbed with longitudinal grooves

These grooved scales reduce vortices formation present on a smooth surface, resulting in water moving efficiently over their surface. And these teeth structured scales make the surface rough, which is why sharks skin is also being used as sandpaper.

Source

The water surrounding these complex structures can lead to protection from marine fouling and play a role in defense against adhesion and growth of marine organisms, e.g., bacteria and algae.

These nanoscopic structures present on the sharks surface motivated researchers to innovate a material which repels the deadly bacteria and other dangerous microorganisms. Sharklet Technologies, Inc. have made textures inspired by the skin of sharks to control the bacteria on surfaces, no chemicals, no antibiotics, no heavy metals it's only the shape the surface that the bacteria don't like.

Bacterial growth on these man-made artificial textures have proven it.

Here, these images are showing the growth pattern of bacteria on the normal surface (smooth) and on sharklet (rough) surface (left; right, respectively) with different time period of upto 72hours of incubation. It is clearly visible that after 48 hours also there is almost no bacterial growth in the sharklet surface while the normal surface has enormous amount of bacterial growth on the surface.

            The main reason behind these growth inhibition characteristics of these surfaces is, they do not allow the bacterial cells to adhere properly on the surfaces, which won't allow them to flourish. And these surfaces have wide applications in medical area. To design the working environment contamination free and providing the safe atmosphere to work. Source

So, as I was talking about how nanoscience makes us understand the reign of sharks in oceans. Their body is designed in such a way that they can swin fast, they can not have any kind of fungal or algae growth and mainly the deadly jaw which have hundreds of teeth, which are continously growing.

Source

Microscopic examination of sharks teeth shows the axe like structure which helps them in cutting the flesh easily. And using this capability of shark to swim fast, several swimsuits are being designed. Earlier sharks were hunted for their skin for making the swimsuit and also the shiny shark suit.

Artificial sharkskin variants used for suiting first appeared in the 1960s. Here is womens artificial sharkskin wetsuits, 1970. From then to now several new variants have been invented to mimic the original sharkskin. Many of the swimmers have used these swimsuits and have reported the benefits of easy and fast swimming with these modified suits. Even these nanostructures have also interested certain industries to used them in ships also.

Source

The lower portion if ships, which are immersed in the sea are covered with these nanostructures. As most often they got covered by algae, mussels, clams and oysters etc., these modified surface provide them self-cleaning property.

This was one of the natures created nanostructure which now we are mimicking to use them in our daily life. I'll be posting more of these interesting nanostructures present in our daily life.

Happy Reading :)

Vinamra