Life's Devices

by Vogel, Steven; Calvert, Rosemary Anne

• ISBN13: 9780691024189
• ISBN10: 0691024189
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1988-12-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

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.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Constraints and opportunities	3	(11)
A variety of variables	14	(24)
Size and shape	38	(22)
Dimensions, gradients, and summations	60	(22)
Gases and liquids	82	(23)
Viscosity and flow	105	(25)
Pressure and flow	130	(28)
Diffusion versus convection	158	(19)
A matter of materials	177	(24)
Arranging structures	201	(24)
Insinuations about curves	225	(17)
Systems of support	242	(12)
The mechanics of motility	254	(23)
Staying put and getting away	277	(21)
Energy and afterthoughts	298	(18)
Appendix 1. Notes on numbers	316	(11)
Appendix 2. Problems and demonstrations	327	(15)
List of symbols	342	(1)
References and index of citations	343	(10)
Subject index	353