Place an iron piece of an engine block, minus the cooling channels, standing upright in the African savannah. Surround it with wood or whatever African termites eat. Heat the engine block and add forms to determine the general shape of the finished product.

The termites will build a mound around the basic engine block with numerous channels and chambers for cooling their nest. Once the nest has built up to a proper size, remove it from the ground a cast it in alluminum, thus making a naturally designed heat sink.
-- discontinuuity, Aug 12 2005

In nature the termites create the heat and came up with a way to remove that heat. The source of heat for a termite mound is internal. I doubt a termite mound would work when used to cool and external heat source. Cool idea though.
-- Antegrity, Aug 12 2005


Exactly what I thought: cool idea, but not practical. It might work for large radial engines since termites already make roughly conical mounds.
-- discontinuuity, Aug 12 2005


Perhaps an aardvark tongue would help things if air cooling proves to be inferior to liquid...oops, never mind.
-- moPuddin, Aug 13 2005



random, halfbakery