This french article has been published by Techniques de l’Ingénieur, and was written by Sylvie Lorente and Adrian Bejan.

The authors define and present the Constructal law as the law of physics that accounts for the natural tendency of all flow systems (animate or inanimate) to evolve into configurations that offer progressively greater flow access over time.

This article shows what make the Constructal law a part of thermodynamics, and that the domains covered by this new law of Physics are broad, ranging from fluid flows to heat and mass transfer.

Reference

• Adrian Bejan, Sylvie Lorente, La loi Constructale et sa place dans la thermodynamique, Techniques de l’Ingénieur, ref. BE8111 V1, 10 July 2017
• Academia.edu

 … but can it solve the problem ?

Jakky Kerubo interviews and discusses one of the last application of Constructal theory: explaining how income inequality happens… But this explanation is not the end game for Adrian Bejan, who is “working on the next question: how to make the distribution of assets less unequal. It involves regulation, but with greater non-monetary contribution from individuals“.

Sources

• Jakki Kerubo, Physics can describe how inequality happens—but can it solve the problem? Quartz, July 14, 2017
• Wealth inequality, the Physics basis, constructal.org, 29 March 2017

In this interview, Willem Larsen explores with Adrian Bejan what the Constructal Law can mean for a tracker, a subject he also further explored in several videos and interviews available online (cf. links here bellow).

In 2006, already A. Bejan and  D. Gobin opened this kind domain of research thanks to a paper focused on the explanation of droplet geometries: splashes vs. splats – with obvious links with forensics…

Links

• Radio interview, Design in Nature with Adrian Bejan, weaselbear and Garth, blogtalkradio.com/weaselbear
• Willem Larsen, The Science of Forensic Tracking (Forensic Flow System Analysis) – videos
• A. Bejan, D. Gobin, The constructal theory of droplet impact geometry, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, 49, 2412-2419
• The 2017 Thermodynamics of emotion symposium, People, Culture, and the Physics of Complex Living Systems October 13th-15th, 2017, in Portland, OR
• Interview of A. Bejan in Science & Vie magazine, Traqueurs de forme article.

This round table about “Design in Nature” took place Saturday, April 22nd, 2017 at 2:30pm, at the The Helix Center, NY.

Prof. Adrian Bejan was one the five participants, and exposed his views on this topic, on the basis of the constructal law of evolution in nature.

Sources

• Event: http://www.helixcenter.org/roundtables/design-in-nature/
• Video: http://www.helixcenter.org/videos/#/live/d1EUjQMgIMU

This review, published inApplied Physics Reviews, covers two aspects of “evolution” in thermodynamics. First, with the constructal law, thermodynamics is becoming the domain of physics that accounts for the phenomenon of evolution in nature, in general.

Second, thermodynamics (and science generally) is the evolving add-on that empowers humans to predict the future and move more easily on earth, farther and longer in time. The part of nature that thermodynamics represents is this: nothing moves by itself unless it is driven by power, which is then destroyed (dissipated) during movement.

Nothing evolves unless it flows and has the freedom to change its architecture such that it provides greater and easier access to the available space. Thermodynamics is the modern science of heat and work and their usefulness, which comes from converting the work (power) into movement (life) in flow architectures that evolve over time to facilitate movement.

I also review the rich history of the science, and I clarify misconceptions regarding the second law, entropy, disorder, and the arrow of time, and the supposed analogy between heat and work.

Source

• A. Bejan, Evolution in thermodynamics, Applied Physics Reviews 4 , 011305 (2017); doi: 10.1063/1.4978611

The physics basis

This article unifies physics with economics by showing that the distribution of wealth is related proportionally to the movement of all the streams of a live society. The ‘unequal’ distribution of wealth on the earth happens naturally. Hierarchy is unavoidable, with staying power, and difficult to efface.

Two architectures illustrate this idea: river basins and the movement of freight.

The nonuniform distribution of wealth becomes more accentuated as the economy becomes more developed, i.e., as its flow architecture becomes more complex for the purpose of covering smaller and smaller interstices of the overall (fixed) territory.

This theory also predicts the Lorenz-type distribution of income inequality, which was adopted empirically for a century.

Reference

• A. Bejan and M. R. Errera, Wealth inequality: The physics basis, Journal of Applied Physics, 121, 28 March 2017.

This article from Adrian Bejan and published by European Review shows that humans and technology are one species, and not two: humans and their artefacts are evolving as one species, the ‘human & machine species’.

The evolution of the human & machine species is well illustrated by the evolution of the commercial aircraft, the cooling of electronics, and modern athletics.

These evolutionary forms of flow organization can be predicted based on the law of physics that governs evolution in nature, bio and non-bio: the constructal law.

In brief, evolution, life and the human & machine species are physics

Source

A. Bejan, Evolution as Physics: The Human & Machine Species, European Review, Volume 25, Issue 1 February 2017, pp. 140-149.