Life's Devices: The Physical World of Animals and Plants - Brossura

Vogel, Steven

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0691024189 ISBN 13: 9780691024189

Casa editrice: Princeton University Press, 1988

Riassunto

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.

Su questo libro

Recensione:

"A brilliant and eccentric book that looks at living things from an engineering point of view, assuming astonishingly little previous knowledge of science on the reader's part." --Nature

Product Description:

Book by Steven Vogel

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Princeton University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 1988
• ISBN 10: 0691024189
• ISBN 13: 9780691024189
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 384