Scale: The Universal Laws of Growth, Innovation, Sustainability, and the Pace of Life, in Organisms, Cities, Economies, and Companies

by Geoffrey West

It’s a lovely thought that the optimum design of our circulatory system obeys the same simple area-preserving branching rules that trees and plants do. It’s equally satisfying that the condition of nonreflectivity of waves at branch points in pulsatile networks is essentially identical to how national power grids are designed for the efficient transmission of electricity over long distances. This condition of nonreflectivity is called impedance matching. It has multiple applications not only in the working of your body but across a very broad spectrum of technologies that play an important part in your daily life. For example, telephone network systems use matched impedances to minimize echoes on long-distance lines;