Mechanism of Operation
In a muscular hydrostat, the musculature itself both creates movement and provides skeletal support for that movement. It can provide this support because it is composed primarily of an incompressible “liquid" and is thus constant in volume. The most important biomechanical feature of a muscular hydrostat is its constant volume. Muscle is composed primarily of an aqueous liquid that is essentially incompressible at physiological pressures. In a muscular hydrostat or any other structure of constant volume, a decrease in one dimension will cause a compensatory increase in at least one other dimension. The mechanisms of elongation, bending and torsion in muscular hydrostats all depend on constancy of volume to effect shape changes in the absence of stiff skeletal attachments.
Read more about this topic: Muscular Hydrostat
Famous quotes containing the words mechanism of, mechanism and/or operation:
“Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.”
—Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947)
“When one of us dies of cancer, loses her mind, or commits suicide, we must not blame her for her inability to survive an ongoing political mechanism bent on the destruction of that human being. Sanity remains defined simply by the ability to cope with insane conditions.”
—Ana Castillo (b. 1953)
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)