Self healing plastic works like blood system, according to Nature News 8 May 2014 and BBC News 9 May 2014 and Science vol. 344 pp. 620-623, 9 May 2014 doi: 10.1126/science.1251135. Self healing plastics that can repair microscopic cracks have been available for many years, but mending the larger cracks and holes has proven difficult. A team of materials scientists have invented a plastic that can heal holes up to 3.5cm across. The plastic contains a system of micro-channels, which are each filled with one of two liquids. Jeffrey Moore, a chemist also at the University of Illinois explained: “You can think of these microchannels as a vascular system, like blood vessels”. When the plastic is damaged the two fluids flow out of the channels and mix. The mixture forms a gel that fills the gap, which then hardens and restores most of the strength of the plastic. The system also has the potential to eliminate breaks in plastics by preventing small, noncritical cracks from propagating to critical sizes.
Editorial Comment: The analogy with the blood vascular system in living things is a good one. When living tissue is damaged blood vessels deliver clotting factors to form a blood clot that fills the gap. When the tissue was undamaged the blood clotting factors stay dissolved in the blood, and the blood remains liquid. When the tissue is damaged the clotting factors become insoluble, and form a solid mass, but this only occurs because they have the built-in properties that change them in the right conditions, just like the repair liquids in the plastic. This new plastic is a clever back-up system, and like all back-up systems, it is the result of forward planning, not chance random naturalistic processes. If this plastic is ever mass produced people who drop their mobile phones or have their windscreens broken by flying stones will be grateful to its inventor when they see the damage ‘self heal’. Therefore, we should be even more grateful to the Creator who designed the blood system that inspired this invention, and give God the glory due to Him, rather than propagating the foolish idea that the human blood vascular system evolved by chance. (Ref. biomimetics, design)
Evidence News, vol. 14, No. 8
21 May 2014
Creation Research Australia