|
⇤ ← Revision 1 as of 2021-06-25 18:15:55
Size: 933
Comment:
|
Size: 1490
Comment:
|
| Deletions are marked like this. | Additions are marked like this. |
| Line 16: | Line 16: |
| An inch is 25.4 millimeters, or 25400 micrometers, so capillaries are '''about __0.02__ hundredths of an inch'''. | An inch is 25.4 millimeters, or 25400 micrometers, so capillaries are '''about __0.2 thousandths__ of an inch, or __0.2 mils__''' or 200 millionths of an inch. Inches are a weird archaic unit, so it is unsurprising that a particle physicist (trained to work with vastly smaller metric units, not mixed engineering units) doesn't notice this error. ----- Page 125: "shrew's heart" ... and ... "whale's heart" ... "This is pretty amazing -- just think of the enormous stresses on the walls of the shrew's tiny aorta and arteries compared with the pressures on yours or mine, let alone those on a whale's. No wonder the poor creature dies after only a year or two." |
Scale
The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies
Geoffrey West 303.44 WES 2017 Beavertin Library
Great ideas. A fat book that should have been leaner - though it could have been more explicit about unsolved problems and open questions.
A couple of math goofs:
Page 119: ... "our capillaries are only 5 micrometers wide (about a hundredth of an inch), which is somewhat smaller than a hairbreadth"
An inch is 25.4 millimeters, or 25400 micrometers, so capillaries are about 0.2 thousandths of an inch, or 0.2 mils or 200 millionths of an inch. Inches are a weird archaic unit, so it is unsurprising that a particle physicist (trained to work with vastly smaller metric units, not mixed engineering units) doesn't notice this error.
Page 125: "shrew's heart" ... and ... "whale's heart" ... "This is pretty amazing -- just think of the enormous stresses on the walls of the shrew's tiny aorta and arteries compared with the pressures on yours or mine, let alone those on a whale's. No wonder the poor creature dies after only a year or two."