MIT scientists, along with architects and wood processors from England and Canada, are looking for ways to turn bamboo into a construction material more akin to wood composites, like plywood. (Learn more: http://bit.ly/WCNN7e) Such bamboo products are currently being developed by several companies; the MIT project, lead by professor Lorna Gibson, intends to gain a better understanding of these materials, so that bamboo can be more effectively used. Video: Melanie Gonick, MIT News Additional footage courtesy of MyBoringChannel and Frank Ross (http://myboringchannel.com/) Music sampled from: Radio Silence (http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Schemawound/TRANCOUNT/03_Radio_Silence) Artist/Composer: Schemawound http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Schemawound/ http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/legalcode

Comments

1. Check out my Bamboo 57 day growth timelapse! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRyOK8fcs_s
   Thank you and have a nice day ;)
2. Yes bring bamboo in....
3. I have open a bamboo treatment mill in Naranjito, Costa Rica and I'd love to connect with you all about bamboo! I move from Porter Sq, Cambridge to Costa Rica 4 years ago, and we just opened up a sustainable building materials mill call MAE or Materiales Ambientales Ecologicos... I would love to connect with you on what you are doing and what we are doing down here. -From the owner of MAE and a Boston native in Costa Rica...
4. can you recommend good reference for bamboo engineering? its mechanical properties and stuff? tnx
5. MIT on Avery Island Louisiana the Moso Bamboo grows quite well. Here in St. Louis, MO the zone 5 climate won't let moso grow for too long. I wonder if MOSO could evolve into a product more cold-weather resistant.
6. Maybe it could be genetically modified to have thicker walls? If we could get 4"x4" boards, it would make an outanding materials. Also, the toughest species seem to make excelent bows.
7. Fantastically informative video! And great presentation by the host too!
8. BADASS!
9. Genetic engineering might help.
10. I find this topic very interesting, and would like to make some questions:
    1.- Is there a relation between the moon and the time of cutting it?.
    2.- What are the properties of bamboo used as reinforcing concrete elements.
    3.- Is it possible to flatten the whole perimeter of bamboo?
    4.- Could we fill the inside with concrete and make it work as a beam or column.
    5.- How can we join two elements effectively?
    6.- What is the right age to harvest and use it as a construction material.
11. I have been growing bamboo in WA for 20 years It is amazing material. There were studies  in Denmark or Sweden I think  years ago that showed how strong.
    I have a question- in that time lapse of growth here  what variety of bamboo is that? I don't recognize that broad leaf.
12. Really Applicable, I'm going to study more about it.
13. Awesome!