Written by a clinician for clinicians

Provides insights into the phenomena and the functioning of devices that anesthesiologists encounter on a daily basis

Uses a "divulgatory" approach with numerous examples from daily life, making it an enjoyable read even for those who don't usually like or understand physics

Preface.- Part I. Gases, bubbles and surroundings.- Perfect coffee and oxygen cylinders: the ideal gas law.- Boats, balloons, and air bubbles: Archimedes' principle.- Air bubbles in the blood sample: better or worse oxygenation? Dalton's law and Fick's law .- Cold, sparkling drinks, and blood gas analysis: Henry's law.- Bubbles, tracheal tube cuffs, and reservoir bags: surface tension and Laplace's law.- Part II. Fluids in motion: masks, tubes, and hemodynamics.- The Venturi mask works like an airplane: Bernoulli's theorem.- From tubes and catheters to the basis of hemodynamics: the Hagen-Poiseuille equation.- Part III. Hemodynamic monitoring.- Toothpaste, sea deeps, and invasive pressure monitoring: Stevin's law and Pascal's principle.- Heat, cardiac output, and what is the future: laws of thermodynamics.- Part IV. Forces in action.- Doors, steering wheels, and central venous catheters: the moment of a force (torque).- Friction, trigonometry, and Newton's laws: all about Trendelenburg position.- Part V. Inhalation anesthesia.- Why a vaporizer is not exactly a vaporizer and why it weighs so much: saturated vapor pressure and heat of vaporization.- Thermal expansion: train tracks, thermostats and, again, vaporizers.- The voice of xenon: origin and propagation of sound.- Part VI. Electromagnetic waves.- Light, air pollution and pulse oximetry: the Beer-Lambert law.- Cerebral oximetry and why the sky is blue: Rayleigh scattering.- Catch me if you can: X-ray, Compton scattering and the inverse square law.- Part VII. Now we exaggerate.- Activated clotting time and... A brief look at the theory of relativity.