Wood

Scientists have come up with a new hardened form of wood that can be fashioned into sturdy nails or knives that are almost three times sharper than a standard dinner table knife ... and they're dishwasher safe, too.

The idea of using human movement to generate electricity is something we've seen applied to many areas, and scientists have now developed a highly efficient form of wooden flooring that leverages this technology to power a lamp with footsteps.

Although stand-up paddleboards are eco-friendly to use, they're typically made of not-so-green substances. German scientists are trying to change that, with a board made of sustainable materials – obtained partially from old wind turbine blades.

We currently rear animals for meat and dairy, cut down forests for wood, harvest organs from the deceased and mine the earth for diamonds. But what if all these things, and more, could be grown in a lab?

A first-of-a-kind spacecraft is set to make history later this year, but will do so using materials you could find at your local hardware store. The world's first wooden satellite is set to enter orbit as a box made largely of birch plywood.

Scientists at Sweden's KTH Royal Institute of Technology have produced a completely renewable version of see-through wood thanks to the addition of a fruit peel extract, which also happens to make it more translucent than previous versions.

Researchers at Yale University have developed a bioplastic made using wood byproducts. The material boasts high strength and durability, but also has the ability to degrade completely in the space of just three months.

It's a sad fact that many of the people who most need water filters are those who are least able to afford them. A newly demonstrated MIT technology could help, in that it uses locally sourced wood to inexpensively purify contaminated water.

There are untold energy sources all around us, if we can just figure out how to tap into them. Swiss researchers have now demonstrated an environmentally friendly way to make spongy wood flooring that can generate electricity with every step.

While lab-grown meat shows promise for sparing animals from slaughter, wood still comes entirely from trees that are cut down. That may not always be the case, though, as scientists are now working on growing it in a lab, too.

We've long been admirers of the work of Swedish designer Love Hultén, who has frequently paid tribute to the worlds of retro gaming and classic computing with beautiful hand-crafted creations. Now he's back with the bizarre Voc-25 chatterbox.

A breakthrough in material science is expanding the trickery of traditional timber, by showing how tweaks to its composition can turn it into a water-resistant film that gives off a warm glow in the presence of UV light.