How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls
Animal Movement and the Robots of the Future
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Narrated by:
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Edoardo Ballerini
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By:
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David Hu
About this listen
Discovering the secrets of animal movement and what they can teach us.
Insects walk on water, snakes slither, and fish swim. Animals move with astounding grace, speed, and versatility: how do they do it, and what can we learn from them? In How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls, David Hu takes listeners on an accessible, wondrous journey into the world of animal motion. From basement labs at MIT to the rain forests of Panama, Hu shows how animals have adapted and evolved to traverse their environments, taking advantage of physical laws with results that are startling and ingenious. In turn, the latest discoveries about animal mechanics are inspiring scientists to invent robots and devices that move with similar elegance and efficiency.
Hu follows scientists as they investigate a multitude of animal movements, from the undulations of sandfish and the way that dogs shake off water in fractions of a second to the seemingly crash-resistant characteristics of insect flight. Not limiting his exploration to individual organisms, Hu describes the ways animals enact swarm intelligence, such as when army ants cooperate and link their bodies to create bridges that span ravines. He also looks at what scientists learn from nature’s unexpected feats - such as snakes that fly, mosquitoes that survive rainstorms, and dead fish that swim upstream. As researchers better understand such issues as energy, flexibility, and water repellency in animal movement, they are applying this knowledge to the development of cutting-edge technology.
Integrating biology, engineering, physics, and robotics, How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls demystifies the remarkable mechanics behind animal locomotion.
©2018 Princeton University Press (P)2018 Audible, Inc.Listeners also enjoyed...
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Humour and understandability.
- By Chris B on 09-08-24
By: Adam Rutherford, and others
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Life on the Edge
- The Coming of Age of Quantum Biology
- By: Johnjoe McFadden, Jim Al-Khalili
- Narrated by: Pete Cross
- Length: 12 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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Life is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the known universe; but how did it come to be? Even in an age of cloning and artificial biology, the remarkable truth remains: Nobody has ever made anything living entirely out of dead material. Life remains the only way to make life. Are we still missing a vital ingredient in its creation?
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More woo than new
- By Gary on 09-09-15
By: Johnjoe McFadden, and others
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The Secret Life of Lobsters
- By: Trevor Corson
- Narrated by: David Marantz
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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In this intimate portrait of an island lobstering community and an eccentric band of renegade biologists, journalist Trevor Corson escorts the listener onto the slippery decks of fishing boats, through danger-filled scuba dives, and deep into the churning currents of the Gulf of Maine to learn about the secret undersea lives of lobsters.
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Uninteresting and poorly written
- By Alexandra DuSablon on 01-10-20
By: Trevor Corson
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What Einstein Didn't Know
- Scientific Answers to Everyday Questions
- By: Robert L. Wolke
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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How does soap know what's dirt? How do magnets work? Why do ice cubes crackle in your glass? And how can you keep them quiet? These are questions that torment us all. Now Robert L. Wolke, professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh, provides definitive - and amazingly simple - explanations for the mysteries of everyday life.
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A funny thing happened on the way to a great book
- By Joseph on 10-01-12
By: Robert L. Wolke
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The Beak of the Finch
- A Story of Evolution in Our Time
- By: Jonathan Weiner
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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Rosemary and Peter Grant and those assisting them have spend 20 years on Daphne Major, an island in the Galapagos, studying natural selection. They recognize each individual bird on the island, when there are 400 at the time of the author's visit or when there are over a thousand. They have observed about 20 generations of finches - continuously.Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself.
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Fascinating in-depth look at evolution in action
- By Philip on 05-15-11
By: Jonathan Weiner
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Soonish
- Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything
- By: Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith
- Narrated by: Kelly Weinersmith, Zach Weinersmith
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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In this smart and funny book, celebrated cartoonist Zach Weinersmith and noted researcher Dr. Kelly Weinersmith give us a snapshot of what's coming next - from robot swarms to nuclear fusion powered-toasters. By weaving their own research and interviews with the scientists who are making these advances happen, the Weinersmiths investigate why these technologies are needed, how they would work, and what is standing in their way.
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Really Good-ish!
- By See Reverse on 04-16-18
By: Kelly Weinersmith, and others
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The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
- A New History of a Lost World
- By: Steve Brusatte
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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In this stunning narrative spanning more than 200 million years, Steve Brusatte, a young American paleontologist who has emerged as one of the foremost stars of the field - discovering 10 new species and leading groundbreaking scientific studies and fieldwork - masterfully tells the complete, surprising, and new history of the dinosaurs, drawing on cutting-edge science to dramatically bring to life their lost world and illuminate their enigmatic origins, spectacular flourishing, astonishing diversity, cataclysmic extinction, and startling living legacy.
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"The Rise of the Scientists Who Study Dinosaurs"
- By Daniel Powell on 09-16-18
By: Steve Brusatte
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How to Invent Everything
- A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveler
- By: Ryan North
- Narrated by: Ryan North
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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What would you do if a time machine hurled you thousands of years into the past...and then broke? How would you survive? With this book as your guide, you'll survive - and thrive - in any period in Earth's history. Best-selling author and time-travel enthusiast Ryan North tells you how to invent all the modern conveniences we take for granted - from first principles. This manual contains all the science, engineering, art, philosophy, facts, and figures required for even the most clueless time traveler to build a civilization from the ground up.
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Get the book
- By Tim McNerney on 11-26-18
By: Ryan North
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The Smart Swarm
- By: Peter Miller
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 8 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In a world where speed and flexibility are valued more than ever, leaders from the corporate boardroom to the military are looking for answers from seemingly unlikely experts - the ones in the grass, in the air, in the lakes, and in the woods. In this innovative audiobook, veteran National Geographic editor Peter Miller shows how swarm species, such as ants, bees, and fish, can teach us to tackle some of the most complex conundrums in business, politics, and technology.
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FLOCK TO THIS BOOK!
- By serine on 04-25-16
By: Peter Miller
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Superlative
- The Biology of Extremes
- By: Matthew D. LaPlante
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 9 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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The world's largest land mammal could help us end cancer. The fastest bird is showing us how to solve a century-old engineering mystery. The oldest tree is giving us insights into climate change. The loudest whale is offering clues about the impact of solar storms. For a long time, scientists ignored superlative life forms as outliers. Increasingly, though, researchers are coming to see great value in studying plants and animals that exist on the outermost edges of the bell curve.
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Fascinating survey of amazing biology
- By Nerd's-eye view on 12-06-19
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Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics
- By: Gregory J. Gbur
- Narrated by: David Stifel
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The question of how falling cats land on their feet has intrigued humans since at least the middle of the 19th century. In this playful and eye-opening history, physicist, and cat parent Gregory Gbur explores how attempts to understand the cat-righting reflex have provided crucial insights into puzzles in mathematics, geophysics, neuroscience, and human space exploration....
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great book. poor playback.
- By Luis on 03-26-21
By: Gregory J. Gbur
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The Founding Fish
- By: John McPhee
- Narrated by: John McPhee
- Length: 14 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Few fish are as beloved, or as obsessed over, as the American shad. Although shad spend most of their lives in salt water, they enter rivers by the hundreds of thousands in the spring and swim upstream heroic distances in order to spawn, then return to the ocean.
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Read and released.
- By Darwin8u on 11-14-14
By: John McPhee
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The Wonder of Birds
- What They Tell Us About Ourselves, the World, and a Better Future
- By: Jim Robbins
- Narrated by: Danny Campbell
- Length: 11 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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Birds, Jim Robbins posits, are our most vital connection to nature. They compel us to look to the skies, both literally and metaphorically, draw us out into nature to seek their beauty, and let us experience vicariously what it is like to be weightless. Birds have helped us in so many of our human endeavors: learning to fly, providing clothing and food, and helping us better understand the human brain and body.
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Stories about birds with something for everyone
- By D on 07-24-17
By: Jim Robbins
What listeners say about How to Walk on Water and Climb up Walls
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Amazon Customer
- 03-13-24
More to it than I thought
As the author states, there is so much more to the movement of animals than I first thought. Many interesting applications of mechanical engineering, 3D printing and thermodynamics used to study animal movement that can later be used to help us in return.
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- Bill B
- 03-10-24
Plenty of Interesting Tidbits
Little known tidbits about how insects came to move the way they move. There is also info about how we can use their movement to create robots to explore different areas like diaster rescue
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- Dhandforth
- 04-02-23
Defence of basic research
Brilliant explanation of how basic research underlies new discoveries and solves problems. The dead fish and shaking dog are possible solutions to propeller cavitation, etc. highly recommended
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1 person found this helpful
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- Sam
- 05-07-22
Wished I had a Science Teacher like Prof. David
Wished I had a science teacher like Prof. David, or had any such book during my College, or University days. So many curious things are happening surrounding us; some of us do not care, some of us try to understand but are crippled with knowledge gaps and scarcity of such kinds of books. David has fulfilled such gaps, by explaining things in so simplified manner, he just gives confidence that we too can discover something with very normal things at our disposal.
Very soon we will have powerful robots, but using our smartphone we can study many things surrounding us. Animals present a different world, a vast body of knowledge to be applicable for the coming technologies, and for human betterment.
I was struck by David's one sentence somewhere in the title; "As we'll see, evolution has offered animals what is good for them, but they are not the best ones". Wow, not only human beings are imperfect, but the entire animal kingdom is !
With technology taking great strides, we need such great strides in science communications.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Susan T
- 11-04-19
Fun, entertaining, hilarious, and informative
I listened to this book many times because it has so many fascinating facts to think about. If kids read this book, they would be immediately fascinated by all aspects of science and math. This should be mandatory reading in high school science and college introductory courses. David Hu is a master at story telling, and he is so funny. He stimulates one to wonder about everything. I hope David Hu writes more books.
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4 people found this helpful