Thread: evolving jewelry

Hello fellow science fans,

Recently I have been working on a bachelor study project to add value to jewelry for the university of Eindhoven in the Netherlands. I want to look into the possibility to combine the aspects of biology or chemistry to add value to the jewelry.

My vision on the project is to create jewelry, having features of evolution. Transforming and growing. eventually I want these features to be controlled by the wearer, to illustrate how man is controlling the evolution of many things around him in the current society. But this will be a second step.

Now I am looking for ideas and expert feedback from the people at this forum.
I was thinking about anaerobic bioluminescent bacteria in a closed ring growing in their a small ecosystem. An ecosystem seemed nice because of the self-sustaining factors. But I am sure that there are a lot more impressive processes happening within biology that I didn't think of.

I've been looking into bacteria mostly because they're small enough to fit into a lot of applications. But if you have any ideas about evolving chemical materials I would be happy to hear of them!

I look forward to hearing you ideas and hope that you can be of help to my project. I am also curious what the result of the poll will be so please vote

Kind regards,

Joost Aanen

If you try to enclose ecosystems in jewelry you may have great difficulty in sustaining the effect for any length of time.

A biological reaction is usually driven by an excess of reactants and will be reduced/inhibited by an excess of reaction products. Tying to solve this problem in a closed system could be several lifetimes work.

JGK, Thanks for your reply. The project doesn't nescesarily have to involve and ecosystem. However I do want it to show an ongoing (chemical/organic) reaction, that transforms the apearance of the jewlery.

Due to the fact that I am not an expert in both chemistry and biology I was wondering I the people at this forum could help me to think of cool reactions to suit my goal.