Life of a leaf

In its essence, science is a way of looking at and thinking about the world. This book illuminates this approach, using the humble leaf as a model. Whether plant or person, every organism must contend with its immediate physical environment, a world that both limits what organisms can do and offers innumerable opportunities for evolving fascinating ways of challenging those limits. Here, Vogel explains these interactions, examining through the example of the leaf the extraordinary designs that enable life to adapt to its physical world. The leaf serves as a biological everyman, an ordinary and ubiquitous living thing that nonetheless speaks volumes about our environment as well as its own. Thus in exploring the leaf's world, Vogel simultaneously explores our own -- answering questions about how objects get much hotter than air when in sunlight and far cooler when beneath a clear night sky; how air movement matters even when we can't feel it; how objects such as trees avoid damage from storms; and how gases diffuse and bubbles form. He introduces us to ways leaves acquire the essential resources for growth and reproduction, resources not all that different from those needed by animals -- humans included.