Open Course Space

Freshman Seminar: The Nature of Engineering

Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyUnited States3.A26
Free, no sign-up neededFall 2005English
Go to course on MIT OpenCourseWare

Are you interested in investigating how nature engineers itself? How engineers copy the shapes found in nature (“biomimetics”)? This Freshman Seminar investigates why similar shapes occur in so many natural things and how physics changes the shape of nature. Why are things in nature shaped the way they are? How do birds fly? Why do bird nests look the way they do? How do woodpeckers peck? Why can’t trees grow taller than they are? Why is grass skinny and hollow?

Description from MIT OpenCourseWare.

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