Diatoms to Dinosaurs: The Size and Scale of Living Things

by Christopher McGowan, Julian Mulock (Illustrations)

An exploration of size and scale in terms of the survival of living organisms analyzes a wide range of life forms, answering questions about metabolism, physiology, life expectancy, the biology of senescence, and other natural history questions. IP.

Genres: Science, Biology

288 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 1994

Reviews

[Mia]

"Bats are a fascinating group that has attracted scientific attention for over two centuries. But their public image needs a lot more work. While writing this chapter I attempted to share some of my new-found knowledge of bats with my wife, but she did not want to hear -- she does not like bats and that is all there is to it."

[Pantscat · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about the physics of the size and scale of living things. Much of the detail concerns the logistical problems faced by organisms as a result of their different shapes and sizes. Much is made of how human technologies have adopted similar principles to achieve locomotion and flight, etc. If the physics of size is your thing, then you will probably enjoy this book. I'm not sure it really is my thing (although, that likely is more a fault of mine than of the book). Much of the book is interesting, but it can be a bit dry in parts, almost as though this were a lecture that was turned into a book.

[Tyler Young · Rating 5 out of 5]

A phenomenal book that I found while travelling in Thailand. It talks a lot about how things move differently at different scales. Such as how smaller birds and insects hover, while larger ones rely on normal flight. Also, a lot about how birds fly according to their size, such as needing to take advantage of a running start, or needing to use convection currents etc.

Flight and fluid dynamics, I would say are the two biggest areas the author talks on. I love this book, and how the author views the world, similar to Da Vinci, and how curious he is in his dealing with the world.

[Xing Chen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this years ago before college and I still find myself recommending to people every so often, for its intuitively appealing observations about organismal body size in relation to other physiological characteristics such as life span. Similar to Guns, Germs and Steel in the sense that the concepts described make you go, 'of course..how convincingly and logically it identifies patterns in nature and addresses issues that'd always vaguely fascinated me..now I've concrete scientific knowledge to back it up.' Wonderfully formative book for a young person.

[Jrohde · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good on natural history and the differences in physics demanded by differences in scale. Interesting but not spell binding.