"Wild Ideas" looks deep into the forests, skies and oceans to explore how animals solve problems. Whether it's weaving a safe place to rest and reflect, blowing a fine net of bubbles to trap fish, or leaping boldly into a new situation, the animals featured (including the orangutan, humpback whale and gibbon) can teach us a lot about creative problem solving tools and strategies. This book uses lyrical text grounded in current science alongside wonderfully detailed art to present problems as doorways to creative thinking. "Wild Ideas" encourages an inquiry-based approach to learning, inviting readers to indulge their sense of wonder and curiosity by observing the natural world, engaging with big ideas and asking questions

"People get many good ideas from nature. Birds, snakes, burrs, and lizards have led to great ideas such as; bullet trains, snakebots, Velcro, and bandages. Includes science and reading activities, a note to caregivers, and a word list"--

Through 140 drawings, thought experiments, recipes, activist instructions, gardening ideas, insurgences and personal revolutions, artists who spend their lives thinking outside the box guide you to a new worldview; where you and the planet are one. Everything here is new. We invite you to rip out pages, to hang them up at home, to draw and scribble, to cook, to meditate, to take the book to your nearest green space. Featuring Olafur Eliasson, Etel Adnan, Alexis Pauline Gumbs, Jane Fonda & Swoon, Judy Chicago, Black Quantum Futurism Collective, Vivienne Westwood, Cauleen Smith, Marina Abramovic, Karrabing Film Collective, and many more.

People get many good ideas from nature. Birds, snakes, burrs, and lizards have led to great ideas such as; bullet trains, snakebots, Velcro, and bandages. This nonfiction Beginning-to-Read book contains high-frequency words and content vocabulary. Connecting Concepts pages include a word list along with activities to strengthen early science and literacy skills, such as understanding nonfiction text, science in the real world, science and academic language, fluency, and finding further information. Aligns with Next Generation Science Standards for Grades K-3.

Repackaged with a new afterword, this "valuable and entertaining" (New York Times Book Review) book explores how scientists are adapting nature's best ideas to solve tough 21st century problems. Biomimicry is rapidly transforming life on earth. Biomimics study nature's most successful ideas over the past 3.5 million years, and adapt them for human use. The results are revolutionizing how materials are invented and how we compute, heal ourselves, repair the environment, and feed the world. Janine Benyus takes readers into the lab and in the field with maverick thinkers as they: discover miracle drugs by watching what chimps eat when they're sick; learn how to create by watching spiders weave fibers; harness energy by examining how a leaf converts sunlight into fuel in trillionths of a second; and many more examples. Composed of stories of vision and invention, personalities and pipe dreams, Biomimicry is must reading for anyone interested in the shape of our future.

"Highly informative and remarkably entertaining." —Elle From forest trails in Korea, to islands in Finland, to eucalyptus groves in California, Florence Williams investigates the science behind nature’s positive effects on the brain. Delving into brand-new research, she uncovers the powers of the natural world to improve health, promote reflection and innovation, and strengthen our relationships. As our modern lives shift dramatically indoors, these ideas—and the answers they yield—are more urgent than ever.

Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.

Introduces readers to the extensive and surprising ways in which they are connected to the natural world around them.

Deployable structures can vary their shape automatically from a compact, packaged configuration to an expanded, operational configuration. The first properly engineered deployable structures were used as stabilization booms on early spacecraft. Later on, more complex structures were devised for solar arrays, communication reflectors and telescopes. In other fields there have been a variety of developments, including retractable roofs for stadia, foldable components for cars, portable structures for temporary shelters and exhibition displays. Three main themes are discussed in this book: concepts, working principles, and mechanics of deployable structures, both in engineering and biology; in addition: theory of foldable bar structures and application to deployable tensegrieties; formulation of large-rotation analysis of deployable structures and finite-element simulation methods.

This is an English translation of Schelling's Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (first published in 1797 and revised in 1803), one of the most significant works in the German tradition of philosophy of nature and early nineteenth-century philosophy of science. It stands in opposition to the Newtonian picture of matter as constituted by inert, impenetrable particles, and argues instead for matter as an equilibrium of active forces that engage in dynamic polar opposition to one another. In the revisions of 1803 Schelling incorporated this dialectical view into a neo-Platonic conception of an original unity divided upon itself. The text is of more than simply historical interest: its daring and original vision of nature, philosophy, and empirical science will prove absorbing reading for all philosophers concerned with post-Kantian German idealism, for scholars of German Romanticism, and for historians of science.