Download or read book The Self made Tapestry written by Philip Ball and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For centuries, scientists have struggled to understand the origins of the patterns and forms found in nature. Now, in this lucid and accessibly written book, Philip Ball applies state-of-the-art scientific understanding from the fields of biology, chemistry, geology, physics, and mathematics to these ancient mysteries, revealing how nature's seemingly complex patterns originate in simple physical laws. Tracing the history of scientific thought about natural patterns, Ball shows how common presumptions--for example, that complex form must be guided by some intelligence or that form always follows function--are erroneous and continue to mislead scientists today. He investigates specific patterns in depth, revealing that these designs are self-organized and that simple, local interactions between component parts produce motifs like spots, stripes, branches, and honeycombs. In the process, he examines the mysterious phenomenon of symmetry and why it appears--and breaks--in similar ways in different systems. Finally, he attempts to answer this profound question: why are some patterns universal? Illustrations throughout the text, many in full color, beautifully illuminate Ball's ideas.
Download or read book Shapes written by Philip Ball and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2011-05-26 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ball takes us on an inspiring journey into the depths of nature, encompassing all the sciences, in which we discover that broad and elegant principles underpin the formation of the countless beautiful patterns around us."--Inside jacket.
Download or read book Flow written by Philip Ball and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2011-05-26 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ball takes us on an inspiring journey into the depths of nature, encompassing all the sciences, in which we discover that broad and elegant principles underpin the formation of the countless beautiful patterns around us."--Inside jacket.
Download or read book Bright Earth written by Philip Ball and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2003-04-15 with total page 426 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Egyptian wall paintings to the Venetian Renaissance, impressionism to digital images, Philip Ball tells the fascinating story of how art, chemistry, and technology have interacted throughout the ages to render the gorgeous hues we admire on our walls and in our museums. Finalist for the 2002 National Book Critics Circle Award.
Download or read book The Tapestry Book written by Helen Churchill Candee and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Art Is the Cloth written by Micala Sidore and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-28 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A colorful guided tour from an expert, enabling weavers, textile lovers, and art lovers to notice and appreciate what tapestries can do and how they do it. This guide from expert tapestry weaver and historian Sidore gives how-to strategies enabling weavers and nonweavers to notice and appreciate the meaning of these artworks. You'll discover much to enjoy in photos of more than 300 tapestries from the 12th to the 21st centuries. Sidore enables you to think about the weavings in ways you have never before considered as she groups pieces that talk with each other--and that also converse with the viewer. Enjoy learning basic elements of weaving to help you become increasingly sophisticated in understanding what you're seeing. Then, learn six ways in which tapestries can call attention to themselves as cloth. This eye-opening guide to seeing explains the great range of materials and visual themes, the use of trompe l'oeil, the importance of the direction in which the weaver weaves, and more. After this learning experience, you'll bring smarter eyes to your museum wandering, deeper enjoyment to your collection and purchases, and surprising new skills and creativity to your weaving of fibers . . . and of life.
Download or read book Patterns in Nature written by Philip Ball and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed science writer “curates a visually striking, riotously colorful photographic display…of physical patterns in the natural world” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Though at first glance the natural world may appear overwhelming in its diversity and complexity, there are regularities running through it, from the hexagons of a honeycomb to the spirals of a seashell and the branching veins of a leaf. Revealing the order at the foundation of the seemingly chaotic natural world, Patterns in Nature explores not only the math and science but also the beauty and artistry behind nature’s awe-inspiring designs. Unlike the patterns we create, natural patterns are formed spontaneously from the forces that act in the physical world. Very often the same types of pattern and form—such as spirals, stripes, branches, and fractals—recur in places that seem to have nothing in common, as when the markings of a zebra mimic the ripples in windblown sand. But many of these patterns can be described using the same mathematical and physical principles, giving a surprising unity to the kaleidoscope of the natural world. Richly illustrated with 250 color photographs and anchored by accessible and insightful chapters by esteemed science writer Philip Ball, Patterns in Nature reveals the organization at work in vast and ancient forests, powerful rivers, massing clouds, and coastlines carved out by the sea. By exploring similarities such as the branches of a tree and those of a river network, this spectacular visual tour conveys the wonder, beauty, and richness of natural pattern formation.
Download or read book Tapestry A Book Club Recommendation written by Beth Duke and published by Art of Dixie. This book was released on 2020-03-06 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beth Duke, Author of #1 Best Seller It All Comes Back to You, delivers an emotional and inspiring novel about family, from the roots that ground us to the branches that allow us to take flight. "Beth Duke is a poet disguised as a Southern novelist. Tapestry made me laugh, made me think and in the end, made me cry. Tapestry delivers on ALL counts." -Dan Brown, Author of Reunion Twenty-two-year-old Skye Willis lives in Eufaula, Alabama, a tourist mecca of stately homes and world-class bass fishing. Her childhood friends are either stuck at dead ends or have moved on to accomplish Big Things. Skye's grandmother, Verna, insists on being called "Sparrow" because she suspects her ancestors were Muscogee Creek. She dresses in faux deerskin and experiments with ancient Native American recipes, offering a myth or legend to anyone who will listen. Skye has no idea what to do with her life. She's smart as hell, but she has no faith or knowledge there's something out there she was "born to do." Nor does she know much of anything about her father, who died in Afghanistan when she was a toddler. He and his family are a mystery her mother won't discuss. But when Sparrow is determined to confirm her Creek ancestry through genetic testing, Skye joins in. The results hit like a DNA bomb, launching them both on a path filled with surprises and life-changing events. Skye learns a harder truth than she ever expected. Alternating chapters between Skye's Alabama life and an intertwining tale of greed, deceit, and control in Texas, this story offers proof that all life is a woven tapestry of past, present, and future. In Beth Duke's uplifting and soul-singing voice, TAPESTRY is Southern Fiction at its best; you will cry, you will laugh out loud, and you will wish you were a member of the beautiful, matriarchal family Duke has created for her readers. This book is a must-read for fans of Fannie Flagg, Anne Rivers Siddons, and Rebecca Wells.
Download or read book Made to Measure written by Philip Ball and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-14 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Made to Measure introduces a general audience to one of today's most exciting areas of scientific research: materials science. Philip Ball describes how scientists are currently inventing thousands of new materials, ranging from synthetic skin, blood, and bone to substances that repair themselves and adapt to their environment, that swell and flex like muscles, that repel any ink or paint, and that capture and store the energy of the Sun. He shows how all this is being accomplished precisely because, for the first time in history, materials are being "made to measure": designed for particular applications, rather than discovered in nature or by haphazard experimentation. Now scientists literally put new materials together on the drawing board in the same way that a blueprint is specified for a house or an electronic circuit. But the designers are working not with skylights and alcoves, not with transistors and capacitors, but with molecules and atoms. This book is written in the same engaging manner as Ball's popular book on chemistry, Designing the Molecular World, and it links insights from chemistry, biology, and physics with those from engineering as it outlines the various areas in which new materials will transform our lives in the twenty-first century. The chapters provide vignettes from a broad range of selected areas of materials science and can be read as separate essays. The subjects include photonic materials, materials for information storage, smart materials, biomaterials, biomedical materials, materials for clean energy, porous materials, diamond and hard materials, new polymers, and surfaces and interfaces.
Download or read book How to Grow a Human written by Philip Ball and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-10-16 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The award-winning science writer shares “a winding romp through advances in cell biology [that] pushes readers to ponder the boundaries of life” (Science). In the summer of 2017, scientists removed a tiny piece of flesh from Philip Ball’s arm and turned it into a rudimentary “mini-brain.” The skin cells, removed from his body, did not die but were instead transformed into nerve cells that independently arranged themselves into a dense network and communicated with each other, exchanging the raw signals of thought. This was life—but whose? That disconcerting question is the focus of Philip Ball’s How to Grow a Human. In this mind-bending tour of cutting-edge cell biology, Ball shows how recent innovations could lead to tailor-made replacement organs; new medical advances for repairing damage and assisting conception; and new ways of “growing a human.” Such methods would also create new options for gene editing, with all the attendant moral dilemmas. Ball argues that these advances can never be “just about the science,” because they are already laden with a host of social narratives, preconceptions, and prejudices. But beyond even that, these developments raise provocative questions about identity and self, birth and death, and force us to ask how mutable the human body really is—and what forms it might take in years to come.
Download or read book The Vampire Tapestry written by Suzy McKee Charnas and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2008-08-19 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in Orb, the vampire book Stephen King called "Scary, entertaining, suspenseful.... unputdownable"
Download or read book A Tapestry Garden written by Ernie O'Byrne and published by Timber Press. This book was released on 2018-04-26 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is a love story about a couple and their relationship with an acre-and-a-half of land. . . with exceptional plant descriptions that read like character references for old friends. . . . beautiful photographs and prose await.” —Library Journal Marietta and Ernie O’Byrne’s garden—situated on one and a half acres in Eugene, Oregon—is filled with an incredible array of plants from around the world. By consciously leveraging the garden’s many microclimates, they have created a stunning patchwork of exuberant plants that is widely considered one of America’s most outstanding private gardens. In A Tapestry Garden, the O’Byrnes share their deep knowledge of plants and essential garden advice. Readers will discover the humble roots of the garden, explore the numerous habitats and the plants that make them shine, and find inspiration in photography that captures the garden’s astonishing beauty. There is something here for every type of gardener: a shade garden, perennial borders, a chaparral garden, a kitchen garden, and more. Profiles of the O’Byrne’s favorite plants—including hellebores, trilliums, arisaemas, and alpine plants—include comprehensive growing information and tips on pruning and care. A Tapestry Garden captures the spirit of a very special place.
Download or read book Beyond Weird written by Philip Ball and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2020-10-14 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Anyone who is not shocked by quantum theory has not understood it.” Since Niels Bohr said this many years ago, quantum mechanics has only been getting more shocking. We now realize that it’s not really telling us that “weird” things happen out of sight, on the tiniest level, in the atomic world: rather, everything is quantum. But if quantum mechanics is correct, what seems obvious and right in our everyday world is built on foundations that don’t seem obvious or right at all—or even possible. An exhilarating tour of the contemporary quantum landscape, Beyond Weird is a book about what quantum physics really means—and what it doesn’t. Science writer Philip Ball offers an up-to-date, accessible account of the quest to come to grips with the most fundamental theory of physical reality, and to explain how its counterintuitive principles underpin the world we experience. Over the past decade it has become clear that quantum physics is less a theory about particles and waves, uncertainty and fuzziness, than a theory about information and knowledge—about what can be known, and how we can know it. Discoveries and experiments over the past few decades have called into question the meanings and limits of space and time, cause and effect, and, ultimately, of knowledge itself. The quantum world Ball shows us isn’t a different world. It is our world, and if anything deserves to be called “weird,” it’s us.
Download or read book Critical Mass written by Philip Ball and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2006-05-16 with total page 532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are there any "laws of nature" that influence the ways in which humans behave and organize themselves? In the seventeenth century, tired of the civil war ravaging England, Thomas Hobbes decided that he would work out what kind of government was needed for a stable society. His approach was based not on utopian wishful thinking but rather on Galileo's mechanics to construct a theory of government from first principles. His solution is unappealing to today's society, yet Hobbes had sparked a new way of thinking about human behavior in looking for the "scientific" rules of society. Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant, Auguste Comte, and John Stuart Mill pursued this idea from different political perspectives. Little by little, however, social and political philosophy abandoned a "scientific" approach. Today, physics is enjoying a revival in the social, political and economic sciences. Ball shows how much we can understand of human behavior when we cease to try to predict and analyze the behavior of individuals and instead look to the impact of individual decisions-whether in circumstances of cooperation or conflict-can have on our laws, institutions and customs. Lively and compelling, Critical Mass is the first book to bring these new ideas together and to show how they fit within the broader historical context of a rational search for better ways to live.
Download or read book Designing the Molecular World written by Philip Ball and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1996-12 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Molecular chemistry.
Download or read book Nature s Chaos written by James Gleick and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With 102 spectacular full-color photos, this fascinating "field guide" explores the world's natural disorder.
Download or read book Invisible written by Philip Ball and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-04-08 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science is said to be on the verge of achieving the ancient dream of making objects invisible. Invisible is a biography of an idea, tied to the history of science over the "longue duree." Taking in Plato to today s science, Ball shows us that the stories we have told about invisibility are not in fact about technical capability but about power, sex, concealment, morality, and corruption. Precisely because they refer to matters that lie beyond our senses, unseen beings and worlds have long been a repository for hopes, fears, and suppressed desires. Ideas of invisibility are, like all ideas rooted in legend, ultimately parables about our own potential and weaknesses. Invisible presents the first comprehensive survey of the roles that the idea of invisibility has played throughout time and culture. This territory takes us from medieval grimoires to cutting-edge nanotechnology, from fairy tales to telecommunications, from camouflage to early cinematography, and from beliefs about ghosts to the dawn of nuclear physics and the discovery of dark energy. Invisible reveals what our age-old fantasies about what lurks unseen, and whether we can enter that realm ourselves, truly say about us. "
