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Philip Ball's Tapestry in Three Parts
Flow: Nature's Patterns: A Tapestry in Three Parts
From the swirl of a wisp of smoke to eddies in rivers, and the huge persistent storm system that is the Great Spot on Jupiter, we see similar forms and patterns wherever there is flow - whether the movement of wind, water, sand, or flocks of birds. It is the complex dynamics of flow that
structures our atmosphere, land, and oceans.
Part of a trilogy of books exploring the science of patterns in nature by acclaimed science writer Philip Ball, this volume explores the elusive rules that govern flow - the science of chaotic behavior.
structures our atmosphere, land, and oceans.
Part of a trilogy of books exploring the science of patterns in nature by acclaimed science writer Philip Ball, this volume explores the elusive rules that govern flow - the science of chaotic behavior.
208 pages, Paperback
First published March 26, 2008
12 people are currently reading
322 people want to read
About the author
Philip Ball
64 books485 followersPhilip Ball (born 1962) is an English science writer. He holds a degree in chemistry from Oxford and a doctorate in physics from Bristol University. He was an editor for the journal Nature for over 10 years. He now writes a regular column in Chemistry World. Ball's most-popular book is the 2004 Critical Mass: How One Things Leads to Another, winner of the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books. It examines a wide range of topics including the business cycle, random walks, phase transitions, bifurcation theory, traffic flow, Zipf's law, Small world phenomenon, catastrophe theory, the Prisoner's dilemma. The overall theme is one of applying modern mathematical models to social and economic phenomena.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
February 3, 2011
Flow is a phenomena still not completely understood. Philip Ball makes a great effort to explain to the reader the physical and mathematical aspects surrounding flows, from water vortex to human crowds. As usual, Philip Ball achieves a great piece of scientific explanation for the non-scientists. The trilogy from Ball should be mandatory for undergraduate students in despite of their speciality.
December 27, 2012
Findings from diverse disciplines are knit into a coherent, articulate whole- a feat of creativity, reassuringly grounded by scientific rigour.
Flow is packed brilliantly from beginning to end with experiment-based observations and associations, and inspired insight. This is the quality and richness of writing that I've come to expect and love from Philip Ball.
Ball clearly appreciates and admires cross-disciplinary thinkers. He begins with a tribute to Leonardo da Vinci, describing the inseparability of all branches of observation, documentation, and research.
Ball's writing is stylistically elegant, and his concepts are organised logically and naturally. But the key feature of his work, that makes it so enjoyable and readable, is his ability to construct solid foundations out of carefully-described, painstakingly-implemented studies, and to build structurally sound arguments and valid analogies.
Ball draws on principles that seem dissimilar at first glance, presents findings from various studies, and then cites examples to demonstrate the ways in which they are, on closer examination, related.
Many of the studies look at the behaviour of solid, liquid and gaseous particles during physical processes such as turbulence, convection, and pattern formation, carried out under controlled conditions in the lab. Experimental setups and results are described in detail and illustrated clearly with diagrams and photos, allowing the reader to engage thoroughly with the examples presented, and follow the results through to their logical conclusion.
Other studies examine the behaviour of organisms, such as humans, birds, and fish. In these examples, conditions are such that individual agents exhibit enough similarity in their actions to be modelled as interacting units. In daily life, we tend to focus on and over-represent dissimilarities between individuals, as these fine discriminations are the ones that govern our responses to a large degree. Under certain circumstances, depending on the research question being addressed, these subtle differences do not affect the outcome of the experiment, and the overall behaviour of a collection of individuals is governed by widely-shared features, which cast light on crowd behaviour and motion- in human and road traffic, for example.
This brings home the realisation that as tempting as it may be to think of humans as inherently unpredictable agents, operating in the lawless realm of free will, this is far from the case, and astute observations yield fascinating and revealing insights about patterns in our behaviour.
If you're keen to sample a range of ideas, inspired by river currents, sun spots, geological formations, insects, and pilgrims at Mecca, then this is a must-read.
---------------
A sample of the studies included:
High-speed photography by Arthur Worthington at the Royal Naval College in Devonport, England, on the corona that breaks into a ring of off-shooting spikes, during splashes.
Harold Edgerton's stroboscopic documentation of the same phenomenon, at MIT.
Work by French physicist Henri Bénard, German engineer Ludwig Prantl, and Hungary an engineer Theodore von Kármán on vortex formation as fluids flow past obstacles placed in their stream of motion.
Peter Olson and Jean-Baptiste Manneville's lab model of Jupiter's atmosphere using concentric spheres- an inner sphere of cold antifreeze, and an outer one of water, where spheres were spun to create a centrifugal force that mimicked gravity.
Philip Marcus’s calculations on turbulence and shearing forces that generate vortex formation.
Locations and numbers of vortices induced by pumping water through inlet and outlet ports, by Joel Sommeria, Steven Meyers, and Harry Swinney at UT Austin.
Polygonal features of vortices by Georgios Vatistas at Concordia University in Montreal, where a layer of water was made to rotate in a cylindrical tank, by spinning a disk at the bottom of the vessel.
Lord Rayleigh’s examination of factors involved in symmetry-breaking in convection, when roll cells appear due to movements of fluid of different temperatures (such as in a beaker that is being heated from below).
German physicist Friedrich Busse studied the various formations that appear during convection, including roll cells, zig-zags, skewed varicose and knot instabilities.
Fluid flows, induced by surface-tension differences, were studied by Italian physicist Carlo Marangoni.
Swedish explorer and geologist Otto Nordenskjold proposed that patterns of rock in Alaska and Norway are formed by circulating flows of water due to convection currents during seasonal cycles of freezing and thawing.
Mark Kessler and Brad Werner at UCSD created a computer model with several ground layers and compositions, to examine arrangements of stones upon soil.
Spencer Forrest and Péter Haff from Duke University modelled the saltatory action and subsequent ejection of grains during impact, using a splash function.
Hans Herrmann at the University of Stuttgart has modelled dune formation and collision, and has reproduced some of the Martian dune shapes unknown on Earth.
Hernán Makse and Gene Stanley at Boston University examined the angle of maximum stability of slopes consisting of grains of different sizes, and the angle of repose.
Julio Ottino at Northwestern University studied how the fractional amount of sand in a rotating drum affects the degree to which initially-separate segments mix.
Sidney Nagel has studied the movement of particles of different sizes in a shaken container (the Brazil nut effect in a bag of cereal).
German physicist Ernst Chladni scattered fine sand over a metal plate, and vibrated the plate with a violin bow, creating patterns that depended on the frequency and amplitude of vibrations.
Harry Swinney, Paul Umbanhowar, and Francisco Melo at UT Austin studied thin layers of bronze spheres, generating complex patterns due to collisions between particles in the horizontal plane.
Craig Reynolds at the Symbolic computer company in California modelled bird flocking.
Jerome Buhl at the University of Sydney studied locust behaviour and dependence on density.
Dirk Helbing and Péter Molnár of the University of Stuttgart developed models of pedestrian motion that examined forces of attraction and repulsion between individuals in crowds.
Flow is packed brilliantly from beginning to end with experiment-based observations and associations, and inspired insight. This is the quality and richness of writing that I've come to expect and love from Philip Ball.
Ball clearly appreciates and admires cross-disciplinary thinkers. He begins with a tribute to Leonardo da Vinci, describing the inseparability of all branches of observation, documentation, and research.
Ball's writing is stylistically elegant, and his concepts are organised logically and naturally. But the key feature of his work, that makes it so enjoyable and readable, is his ability to construct solid foundations out of carefully-described, painstakingly-implemented studies, and to build structurally sound arguments and valid analogies.
Ball draws on principles that seem dissimilar at first glance, presents findings from various studies, and then cites examples to demonstrate the ways in which they are, on closer examination, related.
Many of the studies look at the behaviour of solid, liquid and gaseous particles during physical processes such as turbulence, convection, and pattern formation, carried out under controlled conditions in the lab. Experimental setups and results are described in detail and illustrated clearly with diagrams and photos, allowing the reader to engage thoroughly with the examples presented, and follow the results through to their logical conclusion.
Other studies examine the behaviour of organisms, such as humans, birds, and fish. In these examples, conditions are such that individual agents exhibit enough similarity in their actions to be modelled as interacting units. In daily life, we tend to focus on and over-represent dissimilarities between individuals, as these fine discriminations are the ones that govern our responses to a large degree. Under certain circumstances, depending on the research question being addressed, these subtle differences do not affect the outcome of the experiment, and the overall behaviour of a collection of individuals is governed by widely-shared features, which cast light on crowd behaviour and motion- in human and road traffic, for example.
This brings home the realisation that as tempting as it may be to think of humans as inherently unpredictable agents, operating in the lawless realm of free will, this is far from the case, and astute observations yield fascinating and revealing insights about patterns in our behaviour.
If you're keen to sample a range of ideas, inspired by river currents, sun spots, geological formations, insects, and pilgrims at Mecca, then this is a must-read.
---------------
A sample of the studies included:
High-speed photography by Arthur Worthington at the Royal Naval College in Devonport, England, on the corona that breaks into a ring of off-shooting spikes, during splashes.
Harold Edgerton's stroboscopic documentation of the same phenomenon, at MIT.
Work by French physicist Henri Bénard, German engineer Ludwig Prantl, and Hungary an engineer Theodore von Kármán on vortex formation as fluids flow past obstacles placed in their stream of motion.
Peter Olson and Jean-Baptiste Manneville's lab model of Jupiter's atmosphere using concentric spheres- an inner sphere of cold antifreeze, and an outer one of water, where spheres were spun to create a centrifugal force that mimicked gravity.
Philip Marcus’s calculations on turbulence and shearing forces that generate vortex formation.
Locations and numbers of vortices induced by pumping water through inlet and outlet ports, by Joel Sommeria, Steven Meyers, and Harry Swinney at UT Austin.
Polygonal features of vortices by Georgios Vatistas at Concordia University in Montreal, where a layer of water was made to rotate in a cylindrical tank, by spinning a disk at the bottom of the vessel.
Lord Rayleigh’s examination of factors involved in symmetry-breaking in convection, when roll cells appear due to movements of fluid of different temperatures (such as in a beaker that is being heated from below).
German physicist Friedrich Busse studied the various formations that appear during convection, including roll cells, zig-zags, skewed varicose and knot instabilities.
Fluid flows, induced by surface-tension differences, were studied by Italian physicist Carlo Marangoni.
Swedish explorer and geologist Otto Nordenskjold proposed that patterns of rock in Alaska and Norway are formed by circulating flows of water due to convection currents during seasonal cycles of freezing and thawing.
Mark Kessler and Brad Werner at UCSD created a computer model with several ground layers and compositions, to examine arrangements of stones upon soil.
Spencer Forrest and Péter Haff from Duke University modelled the saltatory action and subsequent ejection of grains during impact, using a splash function.
Hans Herrmann at the University of Stuttgart has modelled dune formation and collision, and has reproduced some of the Martian dune shapes unknown on Earth.
Hernán Makse and Gene Stanley at Boston University examined the angle of maximum stability of slopes consisting of grains of different sizes, and the angle of repose.
Julio Ottino at Northwestern University studied how the fractional amount of sand in a rotating drum affects the degree to which initially-separate segments mix.
Sidney Nagel has studied the movement of particles of different sizes in a shaken container (the Brazil nut effect in a bag of cereal).
German physicist Ernst Chladni scattered fine sand over a metal plate, and vibrated the plate with a violin bow, creating patterns that depended on the frequency and amplitude of vibrations.
Harry Swinney, Paul Umbanhowar, and Francisco Melo at UT Austin studied thin layers of bronze spheres, generating complex patterns due to collisions between particles in the horizontal plane.
Craig Reynolds at the Symbolic computer company in California modelled bird flocking.
Jerome Buhl at the University of Sydney studied locust behaviour and dependence on density.
Dirk Helbing and Péter Molnár of the University of Stuttgart developed models of pedestrian motion that examined forces of attraction and repulsion between individuals in crowds.
August 14, 2017
My full review of the three books together is here.
July 2, 2011
Too technical. Only for the really diligent lay reader. The 'cool' parts are smothered in dull potted histories and science jargon.
November 25, 2014
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13039195
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13039195
January 24, 2010
turbulence and crowd behavior
Read
April 7, 2019On the points of crystallography on pp58-9, if we can recognise that a 1,1,1 slice through a face-centred cubic crystal has the same form as the star of David, it should be possible to go through, address and resolve the other issues satisfactorily.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews