Why Aren't We Spheres?
How Nature Builds a World of Different Shapes
A simple question about your own shape opens a different way of looking at the world.
About the Book
Start with your own hand. If round shapes are so efficient, why do you have fingers? Follow that question through water drops, planets, crystals, snowflakes, cells, trees and shells. Each example reveals another reason nature builds different shapes.
Written in accessible language, the book uses eight explanatory figures, everyday observations, a glossary and short checks for understanding. It also examines where Fibonacci numbers and the golden ratio help explain patterns, and where they do not.
Readers who enjoyed the questions about motion and perception in AT REST can continue exploring here through science nonfiction. Both belong to Science and Big Questions and can be read independently.
Who it is for
- Curious readers who want science explained in everyday language.
- Teens and adults interested in the patterns and shapes around them.
What you will find inside
- Why roundness wins in some situations but not others.
- How materials, forces, growth and history produce different shapes.
- How to test a tempting explanation against what you can observe.
Try a free reading or resource
Why are planets round, but people are not?
Gravity makes large planets nearly round. Bodies have other constraints. An illustrated explanation of why nature does not give everything the same shape.