Cats' Paws and Catapults: Mechanical Worlds of Nature and People
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.63 (738 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0393046419 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 382 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 0000-00-00 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
A great book about nature vs man made creations A great book about nature vs man made creations. Written well so that you can follow complex subject matter in an approachable manner. Picked this up as I was hoping to see distinctly the differences between the two points of creation and what kind, if any overlap occurred.. Israel Ramirez said Very informative but too many topics with not enough detail. Highly readable, informative, and lively. Addresses questions about biology I have wondered about, such as why living things never have metal parts. I am grateful for its introducing me to many engineering concepts. The problem is that Vogel covers too many topics too superficially. For many of the topics, I found myself wishing for a fuller, more detailed, treatment.. A captivating look at the natural and the synthetic Michael J. Edelman What a pleasurable and stimulating book! Vogel is one of those rare authors who can communicate the essence of a complex technical field without either dumbing it down or making it so complex as to be unapproachable to the lay reader. "Cat's Paws and Catapults" is just full of elegant, clear text and beautiful pen-and-ink illustrations that make the difficult clear.Vogel begins by comparing nature's solutions to problems of structu
Technology is something else altogether. Or so I believed before I got into a kind of biology that's about technology as well as life," begins biomechanics expert Steven Vogel in the preface to Cats' Paws and Catapults. Vogel examines the "mechanical worlds of nature and people" in such chapters as "The Stiff and the Soft" and "The Matter of Magnitude." Lots of line-drawing illustrations help readers understand the examples used to answer questions of animal and machine efficiency, design and repair. Vogel clearly loves the puzzles of biology--why, for instance, do daffodil stems bend at only one precise spot? This book is filled with intriguing answers to such hidden questions, and curious readers will eagerly dive into Vogel's investigations of whether nature or human design is superior and why the two technologies have diverged so much. "Life is what biology's all about. --Therese Littleton
We use wheels in numerous ways, yet nature's only true wheels lie in bacteria. This book is about how the ways of living things work and how they grow. Human designers love right angles, but nature is typically rounded and its angles are diverse. Both technologies share the same physical environment but produce vastly different results. Our hinges turn because their parts slide, whereas natural hinges (such as a rabbit's ear) turn by bending their flexible materials. We prefer to make surface ships, while nature swims. It introduces the reader to the field of biomechanics and explains how physical law and historical accident determine the designs of both people and nature.. Human technology has taken 10,000 years to develop; natures mechanical designs are billions of years old