Life's Devices by Steven Vogel
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.
"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
Steven Vogel is a freelance writer and critic and has contributed to several international magazines and Web sites. He is also the Global Special Projects Manager at Burton Snowboards, curated the 2007 exhibition untitled-documents of street culture, and is part of the BREAD & butter annual street culture tradeshow held in Berlin and Barcelona. A former pro-level skateboarder, he has been an active participant in, and critic of, street culture for fifteen years.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780691024189 |
| ISBN 10 | 0691024189 |
| Title | Life's Devices |
| Author | Steven Vogel |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Princeton University Press |
| Year published | 1988-12-21 |
| Number of pages | 384 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |