Rolling stones and turbulent eddies: why the bigger live longer and travel farther.
Abstract
Here we report the discovery that even the simplest, oldest and most prevalent forms
of evolutionary movement--rolling bodies and whirls of turbulence--exhibit the same
body-size effect on life time and life travel as the evolutionary movement united
by the body-size effect so far: animals, rivers, vehicles, jets and plumes. In short,
the bigger should last longer and travel farther. For rolling bodies, the life span
(t) and the life travel (L) should increase with the body mass (M) raised to the powers
1/6 and 1/3, respectively. The number of rolls during this movement is constant, independent
of body size. For an eddy of turbulence, t should increase with the eddy mass (M)
raised to the power 2/3, while L should increase with M(2/3) times the bulk speed
of the turbulent stream that carries the eddy. The number of rolls during the eddy
life span is a constant independent of eddy size.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/15200Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1038/srep21445Publication Info
Bejan, Adrian (2016). Rolling stones and turbulent eddies: why the bigger live longer and travel farther.
Sci Rep, 6. pp. 21445. 10.1038/srep21445. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/15200.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Adrian Bejan
J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Professor Bejan was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Medal 2018 and the Humboldt Research
Award 2019. His research covers engineering science and applied physics: thermodynamics,
heat transfer, convection, design, and evolution in nature. He is ranked among the
top 0.01% of the most cited and impactful world scientists (and top 10 in Engineering
world wide) in the 2019 citations impact database created by Stanford University’s
John Ioannidis, in <a href="https://urldefen

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