The field of biomimicry is the fairly new science of adapting designs from nature to engineer materials and machines to solve various human problems. And it all began with a materials scientist looking at an abalone shell.

"The abalone shell is made up of 95% chalk dust and when you look at a piece of chalk, you can snap that in half, it breaks very easily. So, how can an abalone shell be so extraordinarily tough compared to a piece of chalk?"

That’s materials scientist Joanna McKittrick of the University of California, San Diego. She began working in this field about a decade ago – also looking at the abalone shell as inspiration for better body armor and more advanced ceramic materials.

"It takes a lot of energy to break this thing and this is due to the nature of the way the little chalk dust particles are arranged like a brick wall. All this is happening down at the nanoscale, so it is our goal to try to duplicate that."