Nature's Machines: An Introduction to Organismal Biomechanics
- ISBN-10
- 0128498978
- ISBN-13
- 9780128498972
- Category
- Science
- Pages
- 202
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2017-08-15
- Publisher
- Academic Press
- Author
- David E. Alexander
Description
Nature’s Machines: An Introduction to Organismal Biomechanics presents the fundamental principles of biomechanics in a concise, accessible way while maintaining necessary rigor. It covers the central principles of whole-organism biomechanics as they apply across the animal and plant kingdoms, featuring brief, tightly-focused coverage that does for biologists what H. M. Frost’s 1967 Introduction to Biomechanics did for physicians. Frequently encountered, basic concepts such as stress and strain, Young’s modulus, force coefficients, viscosity, and Reynolds number are introduced in early chapters in a self-contained format, making them quickly available for learning and as a refresher. More sophisticated, integrative concepts such as viscoelasticity or properties of hydrostats are covered in the later chapters, where they draw on information from multiple earlier sections of the book. Animal and plant biomechanics is now a common research area widely acknowledged by organismal biologists to have broad relevance. Most of the day-to-day activities of an animal involve mechanical processes, and to the extent that organisms are shaped by adaptive evolution, many of those adaptations are constrained and channelized by mechanical properties. The similarity in body shape of a porpoise and a tuna is no coincidence. Many may feel that they have an intuitive understanding of many of the mechanical processes that affect animals and plants, but careful biomechanical analyses often yield counterintuitive results: soft, squishy kelp may be better at withstanding pounding waves during storms than hard-shelled mollusks; really small swimmers might benefit from being spherical rather than streamlined; our bones can operate without breaking for decades, whereas steel surgical implants exhibit fatigue failures in a few months if not fully supported by bone. Offers organismal biologists and biologists in other areas a background in biomechanics to better understand the research literature and to explore the possibility of using biomechanics approaches in their own work Provides an introductory presentation of the everyday mechanical challenges faced by animals and plants Functions as recommended or required reading for advanced undergraduate biology majors taking courses in biomechanics, supplemental reading in a general organismal biology course, or background reading for a biomechanics seminar course
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Hogarth: Representing Nature's Machines
By David Bindman, Peter Wagner, Frédéric OgéeBy focusing on the artist's most famous works, this collection of essays applies studies of science and philosophy from the period to give a more accurate sense of the meanings in Hogarth's art.
-
Darwin Machines and the Nature of Knowledge
By Henry PlotkinThis book offers a cogent account of what such a move does to our understanding of the nature of learning, rationality, and intelligence.
-
Relics: Travels in Nature's Time Machine
Combines text with colorful photographs to chronicle the species of animals and plants that are biological relics of a bygone era.
-
Birds: Nature's Magnificent Flying Machines
By Caroline ArnoldHovering, gliding, diving -- how do birds do it? BIRDS: NATURE'S MAGNIFICENT FLYING MACHINES looks at how feathers, body structure, and wings vary from bird to bird.
-
Bionics: Man Copies Nature's Machines
By Alvin Silverstein, Virginia B. SilversteinDescribes the new science devoted to the study of systems in living things such as sound-location, memory and learning, heat detection, and biological clocks and the application of the findings...
-
Analogia: The Emergence of Technology Beyond Programmable Control
By George Dyson... try to build smaller and better bombs and we would try to build even smaller and even better ones,” says Morris Scharff, ... Soviet bomb test in 1949 prompted President Truman to push American H-bomb development full speed ahead.
-
Our Molecular Nature: The Body’s Motors, Machines and Messages
By David S. GoodsellDavid Goodsell, author of the highly-praised book, The Machinery of Life, has synthesized a vast amount of data in a manner that is accessible to the general reader.
-
The Nature of the Mechanical Bond: From Molecules to Machines
By Carson J. Bruns, J. Fraser Stoddart3.5.2 Reversible Nucleophilic Substitutions 328 3.5.3 Michael 3.5.2.1 3.5.2.2 Dynamic Dynamic Additions S S N N 1 2 329 329 330 3.6 ... in a sense, since the only distinction between them is the height of the activation barrier, ∆G‡, ...
-
Machine Nature: The Coming Age of Bio-inspired Computing
By Moshe SipperAn enthralling look at how computer scientists have crossed the line between machines and living organisms Despite being marvels of complexity and human ingenuity, computers are notoriously bad at learning...
-
Machines of Nature and Corporeal Substances in Leibniz
By Justin E. H. Smith, Ohad Nachtomynot themselves organic machines.7 So it is that we find Leibniz in the New System emphasising that “Nature's machines have a truly infinite number of organic parts (organes)... A natural machine is still a machine even in its smallest ...