Dave Gibbons

When I first came to New York City, what I was thrilled about was not the Empire State Building, or the Statue of Liberty; it was the fireplugs in the street. These things that Jack Kirby had drawn. Or these cylindrical water towers on top of buildings that Steve Ditko's 'Spider-Man' fights used to happen in and around.

English Artist

Imagine a soup can's shape to conceptualize 'cylindrical'.

Visual Imagery

Objects aren't always perfect cylinders; slight variations still qualify.

Not Always Perfect

Cutting a cylindrical object will reveal a circle at the surface.

Cross-Section Clue

Note that 'cylindrical' describes natural forms and their advantages.

Nature's Uses

'Cylindrical' is common in design for its simplicity and function.

Prevalence in Design

Understanding 'cylindrical' is vital for describing mechanical components.

Application in Engineering

 the cookie cutter shark are actually prey and when they come in to bite thinking that it's a smaller fish they find themselves in a world of hurt because the cookie cutter shark then turns around suctions its lips and its top teeth to their body and then it spins its body ejecting a perfectly cylindrical plug of

TIL: How Cookiecutter...

 and how it expands and contracts when voltage is applied. Viewed from the side, you can really see those pouches take a more cylindrical shape, such as we saw with the Ziploc bags. We can also place a few such muscle fibers next to each other to create something that looks even more like a muscle

The artificial muscles...

 the actual name given to a rare deep-sea species. But they are generally characterized by their long, cylindrical shape. A sea cucumber is essentially a brainless, fleshy form surrounding a digestive tract, bookended by a mouth and an anus. Adhesive tube feet run the length of their bodies

This sea creature...

 that adds extra stress and encourages it to fold up first. This unboiling method won't work with a whole egg in its shell since the solution has to spread throughout a cylindrical chamber. But the applications go way beyond uncooking your breakfast, anyhow.

How to unboil an egg -...

 Now imagine archeologists digging through the rubble of one of our cities. What might they find? Well perhaps some rectangular pieces of plastic with strange symbols on them. Perhaps some circular pieces of metal. Maybe some cylindrical containers

Rajesh Rao: Computing a...

 was a little cluster of bristles. With modern electron microscopy, we can see much better the nature of the special feature that gives the hair cell its name. That's the hair bundle. It's this cluster of 20 to several hundred fine cylindrical rods

The beautiful,...

 circulating waters encourage corals to anchor and grow despite their plant or stone like appearance corals are actually animals they come in many colorful forms and textures starting as tiny cylindrical polyps just a couple of

Caring for Coral PIPE...

 these are clearly ways of harnessing natural energy sources to save the labour of our own muscles and the most important part is a pair of cylindrical slabs the mill stones which turn over each other and grind that grain into

How to rebuild the world...

 that holds the rocket together and consists of the cylindrical body, nose cone, and fins. Next, the propulsion system takes up the most amount of space and includes the rocket engine, fuel, and oxidizer.

Rockets 101 PIPE National...

 This is really close by astronomical standards. Now rather than call this by its unwieldy catalog name, we briefly called it "Rama," after the cylindrical spacecraft that passed through the solar system