The ingenious nano-machines inside all living things

Synopsis

Over the last century or so, humans have engineered car engines to transform chemical energy (in gasoline) into kinetic energy (motion). Over the last few billion years, nature has evolved many diverse nanoscale machines (100 million times smaller than car engines) to convert between different forms of energy. I’ll discuss the variety of natural machines, the challenges resulting from their microscopic size and the materials they are composed of, how living things accommodate (and take advantage of) these challenges, and how statistical physics helps us understand these microscopic machines.