Adrian Bejan's Blog, page 14
May 23, 2016
The Evolution of Everything
A nice review of Adrian Bejan last book, “The Physics of Life“, is available on Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering‘s website:
To live or not to live, that is not even a question. […] And while the question of living is not up for debate, the question that Bejan does answer in the book is simply, “What is life, as physics?“
Pratt.duke.edu, The Physics of Life: The Evolution of Everything, May 20, 2016.
May 15, 2016
CLC2017 announced: 10th Constructal Law & Second Law Conference
The 10th Constructal Law & Second Law Conference (CLC2017) will be hosted by the Romanian Academy the 15 and 16 May 2017, in Bucharest, Romania.
Official conference webite: http://clc2017.eu/
April 2, 2016
The Physics of Life, by Adrian Bejan
The Physics of Life, The Evolution of Everything, is Prof. Adrian Bejan last book, and will be released May, the 24th.
“Renowned energy scientist Bejan (Mechanical Engineering/Duke Univ.; co-author: Design in Nature, 2013, etc.) reorients the query “what is life” within the perspective of physics. Founder of the “constructal law,” which holds that “power and dissipation conspire to facilitate all movement on earth, animate and inanimate, animal, human, and machine,” the author elegantly argues that evolution transcends the boundaries of the biological and governs the flow of all phenomena. His theory both reorients how we think of physics, shifting focus from the effect of the individual to a necessary entanglement of the whole, and also empowers us to consider “life” as all manifestations of forward flow. From this perspective, Bejan analyzes such myriad subjects as athletics, technology, migratory patterns, and even the ice volume of snowflakes to prove his point—which he does well and often throughout the book. In compelling and mostly nontechnical language, he argues, “the live system has flow, organization, freedom to change, and evolution.” From this, agency derives power, and from power comes movement, a symbiosis that is the manifestation of the “life laws” of physics in living and nonliving things.
While it may take a careful rereading of certain chapters to truly grasp the author’s novel unifying theory, it is worth the effort, as his book-length proof is at once riveting and poetic. Rarely are scientists capable of translating esoteric concepts in such broad strokes without losing coherence, but Bejan’s persistent focus on the details brings the constructal law to life via the everyday. In the end, his blend of science and the philosophy of design (among other disciplines) is convincing and may just shift your perspective of self.
Unique and entirely fascinating, this book will linger in your consciousness and prompt you to look at the world with fresh eyes. ”
Adrian Bejan, The Physics of Life, The Evolution of Everything , St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2016, ISBN: 978-1-250-07882-7
Kirkus Review
March 1, 2016
The hierarchy of bodies in space
Bodies of the same size suspended uniformly in space constitute a system in a state of uniform volumetric tension because of mass-to-mass forces of attraction.
This new paper shows that such a system “snaps” hierarchically, and evolves faster to a state of reduced tension when the bodies coalesce hierarchically, into few large and many small bodies suspended in the same space.
Hierarchy, not uniformity, is the design that emerges, and it is in accord with the constructal law.
References
Catherine Meyers, Why Celestial Bodies Come in Different Sizes , Journal of Applied Physics.
Duke University, Celestial bodies born like cracking paint, EurekAlert!
A. Bejan and R.W. Wagstaff, The physics origin of the hierarchy of bodies in space, Journal of Applied Physics, 2016. DOI: 10.1063/1.4941986
February 26, 2016
The design evolution of drawings
Central concepts and words that underpin the physics of evolutionary design today are reviewed in this article, such as: information, knowledge, evolution, change, arrow of time, pattern, fractal dimension, icon, model, second law, and the constructal law. It shows that drawings, as physical means to facilitate the flow of knowledge, are subject to the natural tendency toward design evolution.
A. Bejan and M. R. Errera, Complexity, organization, evolution, and constructal law, Journal of Applied Physics, Volume 119, Number 7.
February 20, 2016
Like a rolling stone—live longer and travel farther
A recent paper by Professor Adrian Bejan published in Nature Scientific Reports unites animate and inmate life on Earth thanks to the Constructal Law.
Prof. Bejan demonstrate in this article that the simplest and oldest forms of evolutionary movement—rolling bodies and whirls of turbulence—exhibit the same body-size effect on life time and life travel as the evolutionary movement united by the body-size effect so far: animals, rivers, vehicles, jets and plumes.
In short, the bigger should last longer and travel farther.
Adrian Bejan, Rolling stones and turbulent eddies: why the bigger live longer and travel farther , Scientific Reports 6, February 17, 2016, 21445.
Shaena Montanari, Why Rolling Stones And Elephants Live Longer And Travel Farther , Forbes / Science, Forbes.com, February 17, 2016 17, 2016
December 27, 2015
“Serie Constructal” – a fanciful embroideries art project
The last project of Juana Gomez, a Chilean artist, was inspired by the Constructal theory: Juana Gomez’s beautiful embroideries work explores – in rich colours – vascularized constructal architectures such as human lungs, arms’ arteries and veins, or neural networks.
Culture N Lifestyle.com, Stunning embroidered illustrations by Juana Gomez, 22 December 2015
October 4, 2015
The Key to Sustainability: Flows of Water and Electricity
In this publication, A. Bejan draws attention to the emerging literature and physics principle (constructal law) that provide the scientific foundation for sustainability. He shows that the sustainability need is about flow: the flow of energy and the flow of water through the inhabited space.
All the flows needed for human life such as transportation, heating, or cooling, water are driven by the purposeful consumption of fuels, and this is why the wealth of a country (the GDP) is directly proportional to the annual consumption of fuel in that country.
Sustainability comes from greater freedom in changing the organization – the flow architecture – that sustains life. Greater freedom to change the design (from water and power to laws and government) leads to greater flow, wealth, life and staying power, i.e. sustainability
References
Adrian Bejan, Sustainability: The Water and Energy Problem, and the Natural Design Solution, European Review, Volume 23, Issue 04 , October 2015, pp 481-488, DOI.
The Key to Sustainability: Flows of Water and Electricity, Duke University, News Release, September 23, 2015.
September 23, 2015
Evolving into a Better Design: Humans and Technology as One
The Constructal Law is the law of physics that accounts for the natural tendency of designs to evolve freely over time to flow more easily.
As research has been conducted to support this pattern of design evolution, an even greater phenomenon has come to light: Humans and technology are one species, evolving together.
Adrian Bejan, the discoverer of the constructal law and a professor at Duke University, recently spoke about this topic at the 27th Annual Conference of the Academia Europaea 2015 in Germany.
Bridget Cunningham, Evolving into a Better Design: Humans and Technology as One, COMSOL, September 15, 2015.
June 14, 2015
Why humans build fires shaped the same way
This article, published in the Nature Scientific Report, explain “why humans unwittingly build fires that look the same: edifices of fuel, as tall as they are wide. The pile of fuel is permeable, air invades it by natural convection and drives the combustion.“. The article “show that the hottest pile of burning fuel occurs when the height of the pile is roughly the same as its base diameter. Future studies may address the shape effect of wind, material type, and packing. Key is why humans of all eras have been relying on this design of fire “unwittingly”. The reason is that the heat flow from fire facilitates the movement and spreading of human mass on the globe“.
A. Bejan, Why humans build fires shaped the same way , Scientific Report 5, Article number: 11270, Nature.com, doi:10.1038/srep11270.
