Customer Reviews

Comparative Biomechanics: Life's Physical World

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This book would be a fantastic text for an introductory physics class, eg, mechanics classes aimed at future doctors. It begins with the "simple" problem of walking, which can be understood as an oscillation, with the frequency tuned to the length of your legs. From there, the book proceeds to dimensional analysis, and treats the biomechanical universe as a set of simple tubes, surfaces, flows, beams, and levers, all amenable to simple calculation and estimation. This book contains more real, relevant physics than any introductory physics text (with the possible exception of the Feynman lectures, which are totally unsuited for first-year students). It is the best physics textbook we know. (Review co-written by Dr Sanjoy Mahajan, Department of Physics, University of Cambridge).

An accumulation of instructional materials to accompany the book will be sent as an e-mail attachment to anyone who contacts me at svogel@duke.edu--just tell me a little about who you are. The files (Word and PDF) are freely usable for anything except remunerative republication. If you are using the book in a course and wish to limit local dissemination (I supply answers to the problem sets), tell me and I'll do my best to comply.

I had read one of the author's previous books, 'Life in moving fluids', several years ago as part of a biomechanics course. I liked it, so when I saw this book I had high expectations. After reading it, I was not disappointed.

There is a very nice mix of developing basic concepts (e.g. buoyancy or fluid flow) and how living organisms use these in their daily lives (e.g. a fish's swim bladder or a bird's wing).

These general arguments are obviously important for addressing a great number of questions. From paleobiology, could pterosaurs fly or just glide? How fast could a T-Rex run? Why are there so few surface swimming animals? Some other interesting facts he presented were: how spiders use hydraulic force to extend their legs, why gliders tend to have long thin wings, how cell metabolism rate varies with organism size (I was aware of the mouse-elephant curve, but was quite surprised to hear this), hearts have self-triggering muscles and that some fish have their eyes located in a position such that the pressure does not vary with swimming speed (important so that the focal point does not change).

Some of the physics presented was interesting even outside of its use in biology. In my experience fluid dynamics is not covered much in physics, mainly just Bernoulli's equations and Reynolds number. I think most physicists would improve their understanding and intuition of fluid dynamics by reading this book. The materials topics, like crack propagation, were also interesting.

The book covers the basics of Newtonian mechanics (and things like units and dimensional analysis) used throughout the book. I skipped these chapters so I cannot comment on whether they provided an adequate background for the remainder of the book.

Needless to say, I liked this book a lot. I liked both coverage of the general principles and the specific cases used to illustrate them.

I am a student in mechanical engineering and am looking to begin research in biomechanics. I have used this book as a first step in my literature review and it has proven to be the most helpful in getting me started.

Compared to the texts that I am used to (in engineering...) Vogel actually has a delightful writing style that is engaging and thorough. Yes, it's true that some sections seem simple and unnecessary, but I think that is going to be the case for anyone, based on their background. He provides a thorough collection of biomechanical information and presents it in a clear way that invites people like me, who aren't already in the field, to explore and learn more about it. If there is something that you feel that he didn't quite go into depth with, then his excellent references pick up the "slack."

Overall, this book is a delight. :)

I am a grad student in biology who recently got interested in spider silk biomechanics. I was looking for a good book on biomechanics and my advisor suggested that I get this one. It was so disappointing !

The coverage of the various topics is quite superficial. The chapter on biological materials is especially disappointing to me : since I already knew what were 'stress', 'strain' and 'Young's modulus', I didn't learn anything. I guess you can learn as much by just surfing the web -- and that's for free.
I also think the book lacks equations and formulae. You can go through 10 pages without seeing any equations -- just text. Maybe 'equations' does not mean 'scientific rigor', but I can't help prefering a good old equation to lines and lines of text.

Maybe I was expecting too much from this book. So okay, if you are a biologist, don't like maths and have never heard of biomechanics, you may enjoy that book. But you have to be aware that it is REALLY an introduction.