[.ca] Comparative Biomechanics: Life's Physical World (ISBN 0691112975)

Offer from the author...:
An accumulation of instructional materials to accompany the book will be sent as an e-mail attachment to anyone who contacts me at svogel@duke.edu--just tell me a little about who you are. The files (Word and PDF) are freely usable for anything except remunerative republication. If you are using the book in a course and wish to limit local dissemination (I supply answers to the problem sets), tell me and I'll do my best to comply.

Best introductory physics textbook ever:
This book would be a fantastic text for an introductory physics class, eg, mechanics classes aimed at future doctors. It begins with the "simple" problem of walking, which can be understood as an oscillation, with the frequency tuned to the length of your legs. From there, the book proceeds to dimensional analysis, and treats the biomechanical universe as a set of simple tubes, surfaces, flows, beams, and levers, all amenable to simple calculation and estimation. This book contains more real, relevant physics than any introductory physics text (with the possible exception of the Feynman lectures, which are totally unsuited for first-year students). It is the best physics textbook we know. (Review co-written by Dr Sanjoy Mahajan, Department of Physics, University of Cambridge).