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Title: Life in Moving Fluids by Steven Vogel ISBN: 0-691-02616-5 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 April, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $37.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (5 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Great book to start with!
Comment: This is a great book to start with when getting in to the field of bio-fluid dynamics. Not only does it explain the basic concepts of fluid dynamics, but it also illustrates a large number of cases where the life different plants and animals are affected by the fluids of their environment and their interior.
Rating: 5
Summary: An authoritative and very readable introduction to the field
Comment: "Life in Moving Fluids" is a well-written and entertaining, as well as technically accurate, introduction to the behavior of fluids. It explains many of the concepts of fluid dynamics in terms of biological examples, and is my first choice of book to recommend to biologists who want to understand the design and behavior of a wide range of plants and animals that live, as most do, in moving air or water -- our two most common fluids.
That would be quite enough distinction for a book, but the utility of Vogel's book goes farther: it is one of the best introductions to the subject of fluid dynamics for those interested in physics, such as the nature of lift and drag, or the design of buildings or wind tunnels (sometimes the same thing). It also is helpful in physical chemistry where diffusion and convection must be understood -- to say nothing of how fluids move through the pipes and junctures of our equipment.
I was inspired to write this review because I had just recommended the book to a colleague who was designing a wind tunnel to work at Reynolds numbers in the 10,000 range and whose previous sources were from aerodynamicists, whose designs are generally not appropriate at this scale. If you don't know what a Reynolds number is or why it is interesting, this book has the best explanation I've seen. It does not assume that you remember much, it teaches what you need as it goes along.
Many are the times I've recommended "Life in Moving Fluids" to students and co-workers, and in each case, I have been warmly thanked. This review allows me to thank Dr. Vogel in a practical manner for his outstanding book. He also has a penchant for the occasional pun and keeps a light tone throughout, which makes the book suitable as pleasure reading for those who enjoy the popular science magazines, but don't mind a bit more depth.
If you work in fields where fluid dynamics counts (see the section on prairie squirrels), or just fly model planes, the book is also a handy refresher/reference work. It'll blow you away.
Rating: 3
Summary: A good introductory text
Comment: A good introduction to aspects of fluid dynamics among living creatures such as plants and animals. Generally the book covers the material well with good explanations although I found that at times the concepts demonstrated were very well explained and at others not so well. Some of these fluid dynamical ideas are quite non-intuitive and I feel that a course covering this material really requires experiments to give the student a feel for the movements inherent in fluids and the various forces which act to produce the types of drag or filter feeding etc. Naturally such a course could use this book as a theoretical introduction along with maybe some sort of lab manual accompanying it. I did feel that it would have been good to have this together in one text rather than spread over two or more. Having said this I must note that this book is probably not intended in this way and possibly fits into the niche left open by the gap between a serious student text and an introduction which can be read purely for interest's sake as I did. It accomplished this second task quite well maintaining interest even though it dealt in mechanical laws and left out much of the biology, which would, if not directly, have added to the explanation offered yet, provide a link both as a source of the physics and as a means to connect the now separate streams of physics and biology, which is unfortunately nowadays always considered as completely disconnected. Darcy Thomson would have been dismayed at this process. Nonetheless some very beautiful drawings accompany the book and provide much needed sense of the plant and animal world. Altogether a fine introduction.
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Title: Life's Devices by Steven Vogel ISBN: 0691024189 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 December, 1988 List Price(USD): $37.50 |
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Title: Mechanical Design in Organisms by Stephen A. Wainwright ISBN: 0691083088 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 July, 1982 List Price(USD): $47.50 |
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Title: Cats' Paws and Catapults: Mechanical Worlds of Nature and People by Steven Vogel, Kathryn K. Davis ISBN: 0393319903 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: January, 2000 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Vital Circuits: On Pumps, Pipes, and the Workings of Circulatory Systems by Steven Vogel, Rosemary Anne Calvert ISBN: 0195082699 Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr on Demand Pub. Date: April, 1993 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Air and Water by Mark Denny ISBN: 0691025185 Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr Pub. Date: 01 September, 1995 List Price(USD): $47.50 |
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