Life's Devices : The Physical World of Animals and Plants / Steven Vogel.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Vogel, Steven, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Biophysics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xii, 367 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, [2020]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

This entertaining and informative book describes how living things bump up against non-biological reality. "My immodest aim," says the author, "is to change how you view your immediate surroundings." He asks us to wonder about the design of plants and animals around us: why a fish swims more rapidly than a duck can paddle, why healthy trees more commonly uproot than break, how a shark manages with such a flimsy skeleton, or how a mouse can easily survive a fall onto any surface from any height. The book will not only fascinate the general reader but will also serve as an introductory survey of biomechanics. On one hand, organisms cannot alter the earth's gravity, the properties of water, the compressibility of air, or the behavior of diffusing molecules. On the other, such physical factors form both constraints with which the evolutionary process must contend and opportunities upon which it might capitalize. Life's Devices includes examples from every major group of animals and plants, with references to recent work, with illustrative problems, and with suggestions of experiments that need only common household materials.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Preface

1. Constraints and opportunities

2. A variety of variables

3. Size and Shape

4. Dimensions, gradients, and summations

5. Gases and liquids

6. Viscosity and flow

7. Pressure and flow

8. Diffusion versus convection

9. A matter of materials

10. A matter of materials

11. Insinuations about curves

12. Systems of support

13. The mechanics of motility

14. Staying put and getting away

15. Energy and afterthoughts

Appendix 1. Notes on numbers

Appendix 2. Problems and demonstrations

List of symbols

References and index of citations

Subject Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 05. Mai 2020)

ISBN:

9780691209494

0691209499

OCLC:

1153486830