Conservation of Energy Yields the Incubation Time and Embryonic Metabolism in Birds and Tyrannosaur Dinosaurs from the Geometry of the Egg

Abstract

Exciting examples of physics principles illuminate the power and scope of our discipline. In this paper, we discuss a conservation of energy example for an introductory course. Energy conservation is applied to bird and dinosaur eggs to derive a method to predict the incubation period and the embryonic metabolism solely from the egg geometry. The power of this fundamental principle to yield insights into a biological example helps to demonstrate the utility of conservation of energy.