Visualizing Flow

Graphic Facilitator, Bruce Flye, recommends an article Going with the Flow about a mechanical engineer at Duke who works with broad concepts in flow and does it visually. Adrian Bejan is a Romanian-born American professor of mechanical engineering and inventor of the constructal theory of global optimization under local constraints. The theory explains why a river delta looks like a tree or blood vessels.

Bejan's revolutionary idea challenges the age-old scientific assumption that "nature is without design." Good news for those of us who suspected it all along, the main principle of the constructal theory is that "every system is destined to remain imperfect."

He uses the diagram on the board behind him to explain his theory about how things flow.

Though growing up in a police state, Bejan was able to develop his talents. When he was 6, he recalls, a motorcycle rally was held in his town. His parents were so impressed by the drawings he made that day that they sent him to art school.

"I have always been very visual," he said. "I think in drawings, which helped me see patterns."

clipped from www.newsobserver.com See video explanation of constructual theory. In Adrian Bejan's field, there are just two great laws of thermodynamics. So the 59-year-old professor of mechanical engineering at Duke is making no small claim when he says that he has discovered another. He calls it the Constructal Law and says it predicts how everything -- from lightning bolts and rivers to plants, people and money -- flows through time and space. It explains why birds and airplanes can fly, how cities grow and epidemics spread. It unravels the mysteries of snowflakes and Egypt's pyramids, the evolution of written languages. By applying its principles, we can build better houses and roads; derive deeper understandings of the challenges posed by illegal immigration and climate change. Through the constructal law, we can make the world a better place.