CHAPTER 1 PROTECTIVE CLOTHING Clothing does more than make people look good Humans need clothing to protect their bodies Some of today’s clothing protects people in dangerous situations High-tech designs make this type of clothing possible Many scientists find ideas for these designs in nature The scientists identify a problem Firefighters wear flame-resistant clothing to prevent burns 5
Then they study how plants or animals solve it They make inventions that copy these solutions This process is called biomimicry Biomimicry is responsible for some of the newest protective clothing For example police officers and soldiers use body armor to stay safe But most armor is tough and inflexible Researchers turned to spider silk to solve this problem Spider silk is one of the strongest fibers in nature One company is using spider silk to make a new kind of body armor Unfortunately it can be difficult to produce large amounts of spider silk Spiders do not work well in groups So 6
Spider silk can be stretched several times its length without breaking researchers decided to put spider DNA into silk worms The silk worms then make large amounts of silk fibers These fibers are similar to spider silk Using the silk fibers researchers created a strong cloth known as Dragon Silk This material can be used to make protective clothing 7
