Nature's propellers

I was out having lunch at Tommy Pastrami in Irvine with a friend (I was trying to quench my craving for corned beef sandwich) and I noticed the blossom on the side of our table.

The flowers had 5 petals and each petal had a distinctive twist to it resembling a propeller. As I picked one up and dropped it from a height, it started spinning and drifting away from the lift it created from the spin induced by gravity. Not sure what the reason is...maybe to disperse the seeds away from parent plant? (but its a flower..don't they reproduce from pollination?)

Amazing...how we as humans have learned so much from nature and copied some of their designs..from Velcro (from seeds that stick to your socks from those undergrowth) to high strength carbon nano-structures (from "honey combed" structures of bones with amazing strength to weight ratio) to rough hydrodynamic skins on race sailships (from studies that rough shark skins help with hydrodynamics) .


Here's my humble attempt to mimic the flower with my 2-fin paper propeller..it actually spins and works!