What Are Natural Structures

This book looks at natural structures such as plants, animal bodies, mountains, caves, rock formations, and icebergs, the materials from which they are made, and their colors, shapes, and textures. It shows structures made by animals, such as beehives and bird nests. This wonderful book with amazing photos will encourage young readers to notice colors and shapes in nature and how they relate to the purpose of structures.

"The structural designs that occur in nature - in molecules, in crystals, in living cells - appear in this fully illustrated book as a source of inspiration and study of design of man-made structures" -- BOOK JACKET.

First published by the McDonnell-Douglas Advanced Research Laboratories in 1969 with the title, Handbook of Structure, Research Communication 75, it became the most requested publication in the history of DARL. A significantly expanded version was published by Eudaemon Press in 1972 with the title Natural Structure: Toward a Form Language. The third edition appeared as a Dover Science Book Publication, titled, The Geometrical Foundation of Natural Structure beginning in 1979. In the forty years that The Geometry of Natural Structure has been available to the public, the work has continued to be a valuable resource tool for scientists, architects, and artists. The Geometry of Natural Structure is a comprehensive work on geometric form in space. A convenient and stimulating handbook for scientists and designers, it covers the regular and semi-regular polyhedra, their various symmetries, how they fit together to fill space, and other structural considerations. Beginning with an introduction that places geometric structure in its proper mathematical context, the author then presents a detailed description of the core geometric forms of natural structure: polygons, polyhedra, aggregations of spheres, and packings of polyhedra. Topics considered include: the inter-relationships among geometrical/ topological forms, the unit cell concept, Golden Section, surface area and volume relationships of polyhedra, sphere coverings, Euler's law, and polyhedra distortions. Mr. Williams concludes with a rewarding discussion of the methodologies by which forms can be generated: truncation, rotation-translation, augmentation-deletion, fistulation, and others. The many tables located through¬out the text are extremely valuable for reference.

This book uncovers mathematical structures underlying natural intelligence and applies category theory as a modeling language for understanding human cognition, giving readers new insights into the nature of human thought. In this context, the book explores various topics and questions, such as the human representation of the number system, why our counting ability is different from that which is evident among non-human organisms, and why the idea of zero is so difficult to grasp. The book is organized into three parts: the first introduces the general reason for studying general structures underlying the human mind; the second part introduces category theory as a modeling language and use it for exposing the deep and fascinating structures underlying human cognition; and the third applies the general principles and ideas of the first two parts to reaching a better understanding of challenging aspects of the human mind such as our understanding of the number system, the metaphorical nature of our thinking and the logic of our unconscious dynamics.

Jack the cat gets much more than he bargained for when he decides to build the perfect nest to attract the perfect chicken, who will lay the perfect egg, which will make the perfect omelet.

Unlike most natural colours that are based on pigment absorption, the striking iridescent and intense colouration of many butterflies, birds or beetles stems from the interaction of light with periodic sub-micrometer surface or volume patterns, so called “photonic structures”. These “structural colours” are increasingly well understood, but they are difficult to create artificially and exploit technologically. In this thesis the field of natural structural colours and biomimetic photonic structures is covered in a wide scope, ranging from plant photonics to theoretical optics. It demonstrates diffractive elements on the petal surfaces of many flowering plant species; these form the basis for the study of the role of structural colours in pollinator attraction. Self-assembly techniques, combined with scale able nanofabrication methods, were used to create complex artificial photonic structures inspired by those found in nature. In particular, the colour effect of a Papilio butterfly was mimicked and, by variation of its design motive, enhanced. All photonic effects described here are underpinned by state-of-the-art model calculations.