essays. term papers, thesis

Physical effects of scaling on organisms

Title: Physical effects of scaling on organisms
Category: /Science & Technology/Physics
Details: Words: 639 | Pages: 2 (approximately 235 words/page)
Physical effects of scaling on organisms
Scaling is described as the structural and functional consequences of changes in size and scale among otherwise similar organisms. What this means is that similar organisms are affected differently by the influence of gravity, depending on their size. If an animal was doubled in size, then spherical body of the larger animal would have twice the radius of the smaller original. The volume of a sphere is (4π/3)r3 and the surface area of a …showed first 75 words of 639 total…
You are viewing only a small portion of the paper.
Please login or register to access the full copy.
…showed last 75 words of 639 total…cross sectional area, and thus total strength, as the original. That means the pressure on the legs increases 100 times. The animal's bones would probably break and it would die. In these few examples we can see that evolution is greatly limited by scaling. We can be reassured that it would be impossible for some sci-fi mutation to occur in which insects become 1,000 times their normal size due to the physical effects of scaling on organisms.

Need a custom written paper?