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Nature's Machines
An Introduction to Organismal Biomechanics
This introduction to organismal biomechanics presents the fundamental principles of biomechanics in a concise, accessible way while maintaining necessary rigor
David E. Alexander (Author)
9780128044049, Elsevier Science
Paperback, published 16 August 2017
202 pages
22.9 x 15.1 x 1.4 cm, 0.29 kg
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.
1. Introduction and Physics Review 2. Solid Materials 3. Fluid Biomechanics 4. Biological Materials Blur Boundaries 5. Systems and Scaling 6. Organismal versus Technological Design
Subject Areas: Zoology & animal sciences [PSV], Developmental biology [PSC], Evolution [PSAJ]
