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Venus Flower Basket — printable fact sheet
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Venus Flower Basket
Euplectella aspergillum
The Venus flower basket (Euplectella aspergillum) is a deep-sea glass sponge that builds itself a hollow, cylindrical lattice out of silica, and that lattice has become a case study in structural engineering. The skeleton is organised over at least seven hierarchical levels, fro…
Did you know?
- The sponge's silica fibers are so well-constructed that they can transmit light like natural fiber-optic cables.
- Its glass skeleton is a lattice so efficient at resisting buckling that engineers have proposed copying it for bridges and buildings. Its silica spicules are natural optical fibres, made at seawater temperature and far tougher than the man-made kind. A pair of shrimp enter the sponge as larvae, grow too big to leave, and spend their whole lives sealed inside together, which is why a dried specimen is a traditional Japanese wedding gift. The whole structure is built at the bottom of the ocean, out of dissolved silica, with no heat and no furnace.
What I learned
Draw the venus flower basket
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