Life's Devices: The Physical World of Animals and Plants / Edition 1

by Steven Vogel

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691024189
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	12/21/1988
Series:	Princeton Paperbacks
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	1,462,526
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

Steven Vogel (1940–2015) was the James B. Duke Professor Emeritus of Biology at Duke University. His books include Comparative Biomechanics and Glimpses of Creatures in Their Physical Worlds (both Princeton). Rob Dunn is the William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor in the Department of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University. His books include Delicious (Princeton) and Never Home Alone.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“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

Editorial Reviews

"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

"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 Lib

A book of high scholarship and ingenuity of interest to the general reader and students of biomechanics. Vogel (zoology, Duke U.) surveys the designs and techniques of plants and animals in terms of how they contend with and take advantage of such constants as gravity, the properties of water, and the compressibility of air. Includes experiments and demonstrations with common materials. Cloth edition ($49.50) not seen. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

"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

From the Publisher