Scaling

Book excerpt: The author describes and teaches the art of discovering scaling laws, starting from dimensional analysis and physical similarity, which are here given a modern treatment. He demonstrates the concepts of intermediate asymptotics and the renormalisation group as natural consequences of self-similarity and shows how and when these notions and tools can be used to tackle the task at hand, and when they cannot. Based on courses taught to undergraduate and graduate students, the book can also be used for self-study by biologists, chemists, astronomers, engineers and geoscientists.