Furry Logic
The Physics of Animal Life
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
The animal world is full of mysteries. Why do dogs slurp from their drinking bowls while cats lap up water with a delicate flick of the tongue? How does a tiny turtle hatchling from Florida circle the entire northern Atlantic before returning to the very beach where it hatched? And how can a Komodo dragon kill a water buffalo with a bite only as strong as a domestic cat's?
These puzzles – and many more besides – are all explained by physics. From heat and light to electricity and magnetism, Furry Logic unveils the ways that more than 30 animals exploit physics to eat, drink, mate and dodge death in their daily battle for survival.
Along the way, science journalists Matin Durrani and Liz Kalaugher introduce the great physicists whose discoveries helped us understand the animal world, as well as the animal experts of today who are scouring the planet to find and study the animals that seem to push the laws of physics to the limit.
Presenting mind-bending physics principles in a simple and engaging way, Furry Logic will appeal both to animal lovers and to those curious to see how physics crops up in the natural world. It's more of a 'howdunit' than a whodunit, though you're unlikely to guess some of the answers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bridging physics and biology in an accessible, informative, and (mostly) humorous manner, science journalists Durrani and Kalaugher take readers on an eclectic tour of the natural world. In individual chapters focusing on the physics of heat, force, fluid dynamics, sound, electricity and magnetism, and light, they explain basic principles and describe how a range of animals make use of those principles, often in surprising ways, to increase their ability to survive and reproduce. The authors demonstrate why mosquitos aren't killed when hit by raindrops weighing 50 times the mass of the insect, how bees manage to fly when simple equations suggest that they shouldn't be able to generate enough lift to do so, and how loggerhead turtles use the Earth's magnetic field to return to the beach upon which they hatched after swimming in the open ocean for five to 10 years. The examples are often fascinating, but Durrani and Kalaugher's larger message about the need to integrate the sciences is far more important: "Dividing physicists and biologists making them go to separate classes and learn different subjects stifles progress." Durrani and Kalaugher approach their captivating material in a lighthearted fashion, though the wordplay gets a bit stale by the end of the book.
