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When the author was young he would have to bathe after his two older brothers, s
There were many interesting materials described in the book. The most fascinating by far was Aerogel But the most immediately interesting was chocolate. I hadn't realised it was such a technical marvel. Chocolate was a nasty, fatty, gritty bitter drink for the Incas (view spoiler)[ I don't quite believe him (hide spoiler)] but through technology has now been transformed into the almost orgasmic pleasure it is today.When the author was young he would have to bathe after his two older brothers, so he said the water was always cold and it wasn't very pleasant. Then they all saw the Cadbury's Flake ad on tv and agreed that they had never seen anyone look so ... content (ah, innocent youth!). They didn't have a tv (the family was weird) so they had only seen it at friends' houses and described it to their mother as a woman in a bath who puts a Cadbury's Flake in her mouth and looks overcome with happiness. The mother banned them from watching it!
There are six different crystallne states of chocolate, they each contribute that delicious mouth feel of instantly melting chocolate, crispness of the first bite then the softer texture, the smoothness, all the good the good things we love chocolate for. And all of these are reached by heating chocolate to exact temperatures. Only the sixth crystal combines everything together with a mirror surface, that's the one all the cooking shows go on about when talking about 'tempering'.
Cocoa processing with Carib Indians (view spoiler)[ In my adventure days, I was staying in Dominica for a while, staying in Jean Rhys house, now a guest house, Cherry Orchard, and setting off on expeditions mostly to go climbing. I got an invitation to the Carib Reserve where Carib Indians live in a way of life that has modernised but still keeps the old ways. The pods do grow directly from the trunk, are big and oval and come in all colours. When split open with a machete, the author doesn't mention this, the beans sit in a white cotton wool substance that you can suck. It's delicious, juicy, lemon-flavoured but not acid, very thirst quenching. We didn't pile the beans up to ferment - which is what develops the flavour, but instead laid them on flat, prepared earth in a layer a few inches high, and every day in the sunshine they got pinky-browny and we raked them, so every side was exposed to the sun. After two weeks they were considered fermented and then spread out into a thin layer to dry out, then roasted until brown (the smell of roasting cocoa beans is like chocolate and caramel together). We husked them and then pounded them in mortars adding ground cinnamon bark and grated nutmeg. It was hard work. it's very cakey and dry, but as the oils are released it becomes easier. The paste was rolled into balls which quickly dried out and became extremely hard. This is grated into boiling water with lots of sugar and condensed milk and called Cocoa Tea. Although the Caribs weren't exactly rolling in it, they weren't poor either. Their main source of income seemed to be smuggling between Dominica and Marie Galante - cars, fridges, big appliances that attracted up to 100% duty in Dominica but were as cheap as France in Guadeloupe. Amost the whole of Dominica is bilingual, Kweyol or patois. It's French-based and spoken on many islands as a first language, English ones, French ones and Haiti (and Fort Lauderdale, the American capital of Haiti). However, the Caribs who were never conquered, but signed treaties, do not speak Kweyol, only, these days, English. (hide spoiler)]
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Living concrete, self-cleaning concrete that scrubs the air and concrete fabric- the next step in building This is phenomenal, or it is to me. Scientists found a type of bacteria that lives in lakes so alkaline that it would burn human skin. One of these bacterium excretes calcite - a constitutent of concrete. They can live dormant encased in rock for decades, but if a crack forms and their is water present, they wake up and start looking for food. So the bacteria and a starch are added to concrete and the bacteria grow and replicate and excrete the calcite that bonds to the concrete building up a mineral structure that spans the crack and sealing it up. Self-healing concrete recovers 90% of its strength.
Think of all the buildings and walls affected with cracks but not to the point of destruction - they could recover without massive, expensive and often life-disturbing repairs.
Textile concrete This is going to be a life saver. Concrete fabric rolls (I'm thinking of so many sculptures I could do) can be dropped from the air over areas of natural disaster. Think of Haiti. When water is added, this fabric can be moulded over a form into any shape required. Concrete tents can be made, weather-proof and sturdy for years to come whilst the city is reconstructed.
Self-cleaning concrete This contains titanium dioxide particles (view spoiler)[as does the whitest, and most covering, of paints, artist or house. It is also used in eyeshadows, blush and is the major ingredient in physical sunblock creams (hide spoiler)]. The particles are transparent so the concrete looks the same but when it absorbs sunlight it creates free radicles which breaks down organic dirt and the residue is blown or washed away by wind or rain.
However, it also reduces the level of nitrogen oxide produced by cars without catalytic converters. So around these concrete buildings the air is cleaner.
I never thought that concrete was interesting in any way, just a solid grey, not very attractive material used in building but then covered up with other materials or paint. Now I find it's fascinating.
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The most fascinating chapter so far is on concrete. The Romans discovered a naturally-occuring concrete, Pozzolan concrete (it's found in Pozzuoli ). They realised after some while that concrete that was not under compression, would eventually develop cracks and break down, they never solved this. But they built what is still the world's biggest concrete dome on the Pantheon - its diameter is 142ft and the distance from its apex to the floor is also 142ft meaning it could hold a perfect sphere imagine that! They why and how it was built, are a mystery. (The Capitol dome which is 96ft. and almost 2,000 years later it is still standing, it's cracks not structurally important - the compression keeps it together.
After the Romans concrete was forgotten about for more than a 1,000 years. The problem of concrete shattering was solved by a gardener, Joseph Monier in Paris. He made concrete pots for his big, imported tropical plants, but they weren't any more long-lived than the usual terracotta ones. So he reinforced them with metal. And that worked. (It is part chemical reaction, and part the two materials expand and contract at the same rate to temperatures).
Interesting fact about concrete. It must be mixed with the exact amount of water to be strong, and strength is gained over years, not just as it dries. It doesn't actually dry, there is a reaction between the water and the concrete. Too much water and the concrete will not have enough of the molecules that bind with it, too little and there will be too many free ones. That is why in poor areas of the world like Haiti, all the buildings collapse and in a rich one, like San Francisco, only a few of them do.
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Why, the author says, books will not be replaced by pixels on a screen anytime soon.
However, it is unlikely that ebooks will completely supplant books while it lacks paper's distinctive smell, feel, and sound, since it is this multisensual physicality of reading that is one of its great attractions. "People love books, more perhaps than they love the written word. They use them as a way to define who they are and to provide physical evidence of their values. Books on shelves and on tables are a kind of internal marketing exercise, reminding us who we are and who we want to be. We are physical beings so it perhaps makes sense for us to identify and express our values using physical objects, which we like to touch and smell as well as read.
This book is so fascinating (5 and a half stars) that half way through I ordered Liquid Rules: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives.
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See, I am a curious little critter, but for a long time, many too specific fields were unreachable, because there was nothing on the market that could help a layman understand such complex fields as chemistry and all that engineering around how things are made. But finally, the rise of entertaining, hard fun, edutainment has begun.
The chapters are more
Material science can be fascinating, awe-inspiring, and motivate to a completely new look at everyday things and the world around us in general.See, I am a curious little critter, but for a long time, many too specific fields were unreachable, because there was nothing on the market that could help a layman understand such complex fields as chemistry and all that engineering around how things are made. But finally, the rise of entertaining, hard fun, edutainment has begun.
The chapters are more like short- stories, interesting tales including history, personal anecdotes, and no chance to ever get boring or too broken down or too complex, the perfect balance, as all things should be.
There are some books that deal with everyday things, basics of different fields of science, and they always have the same effect on me. Like good fiction, they open the mind for theories, ideas, inspiration, and, most important, enthusiasm, awe, and mindfulness for the everyday things around us. Of course, there has to be an equilibrium of productive optimization of lifetime and running around enchanted by the smallest grain of anything as if stoned, but we tend to avoid the intuitively deemed unproductive just realizing the world, seeing it as less valuable.
But this closes certain gates to creativity and new, fresh impulses because in finding out new facts about and properties and features of things we used to find normal and have seen and used tens of thousands of times, we expand the mind and its potential.
What often stuns me the most is that there are so many experts in extremely complex endeavors like building a smartphone or any complex machinery, who are actually just using relatively primitive methods, often, like in pharmacy, just knowing that it works and not exactly why and there are so many still unknown factors, especially in the fields of physics, chemistry, and biology, that will open options that seem unimaginable today. And we are already so far, so highly developed, have so much individual potential that can be unleashed with all that tools and all of it will seem so 21st century anachronistic to future generations.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materia...
But have no fear because Mark is here. And Mark makes materials science sexy.
Stuff Matters brings to life the man-made world around us. Suddenly steel, concrete and paper are fascinating when presented in an intelligent, funny and whimsical way. Materials science textbooks seem to be a collection of phase
Materials science, although being closely related to chemistry, can be enough to send even most scientists to sleep. Endless talks of the differing types of ceramics, stress versus strain...zzz.But have no fear because Mark is here. And Mark makes materials science sexy.
Stuff Matters brings to life the man-made world around us. Suddenly steel, concrete and paper are fascinating when presented in an intelligent, funny and whimsical way. Materials science textbooks seem to be a collection of phase diagrams stitched together and put between some covers, but there are no phase diagrams here (but I would have loved one for chocolate (6 different crystal structures!(The one we usually experience is structure V, makes a nice snap, high melting point))) )) ) .
Yes there is a whole chapter on chocolate.
All throughout Mark tells some fascinating tales, both personal and historical, that add to the flavour of the book. He devotes each chapter to a certain material and even these chapters have varying styles. These differing styles mostly worked well, but I did not really appreciate the screenplay on plastics.
But altogether a rather fascinating book that should keep most scientifically minded or curious types engrossed and amazed at the materials around us. I had never heard of Mark before now, but the book tells that he has regular TV appearances on UK telly. I'm going to have to keep an eye out. If he is half a good a presenter as a writer it should be some great TV.
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So here you are, sitting on your couch or lying in bed, sipping some tea and reading this review. Imagine that an alien life form suddenly appears, armed with a high tech material-deteriorating gun that is programmed to destroy every man-made material in sight (yeh, I know that's unlikely but just imagine it anyway), aims it at you, and POOF! You are now sitting naked, suspended in mid air, your tablet/laptop gone, your cup of tea gone, the glasses that allow you to read have disappeared. You no
So here you are, sitting on your couch or lying in bed, sipping some tea and reading this review. Imagine that an alien life form suddenly appears, armed with a high tech material-deteriorating gun that is programmed to destroy every man-made material in sight (yeh, I know that's unlikely but just imagine it anyway), aims it at you, and POOF! You are now sitting naked, suspended in mid air, your tablet/laptop gone, your cup of tea gone, the glasses that allow you to read have disappeared. You no longer even have your smartphone to take a picture of this alien, and now no one is going to believe you when you insist that this happened. Instead, you're going to go running outside without a stitch of clothing, the neighbours will call the cops on you, and you will find yourself locked up in a mental ward. Well, that's if the alien doesn't decide to beam you up into its spaceship and perform any number of experiments that will also not be believed by your fellow humans. Sucks, doesn't it? I'm glad I'm not you and glad I've never had the experience of Alien-with-a-Material-Deteriorating-Gun show up in my bedroom. I'm glad the material that makes my life comfortable hasn't been annihilated, and the likelihood of an alien suddenly blasting it all away is pretty much nil.
In Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World materials scientist Mark Miodownik talks about nine different materials that are prevalent in our everyday lives and which would be sorely missed if they suddenly disappeared. He talks about their molecular makeup and why they have the properties they do. He answers such questions as:
•Why razors become dull and paper clips bend
•Why we don't taste the metal of our cutlery
•Why chocolate tastes the way it does, which is nothing like a cocoa bean tastes
•Why our skin cannot tan through glass
•Why elastic is stretchy
Mr. Miodownik talks about graphene and graphite, aerogel and paper, and several other man-made materials. I especially loved learning about aerogel, which I'd never heard of before and find utterly fascinating. It is amazing how it was first made, why it is the way it is, and what it can be used for. There are so many interesting facts in this book and anyone who enjoys learning about "things" will no doubt find this book interesting as well.
This book will not, however, tell you what to do if Alien-with-a-Material-Deteriorating-Gun shows up in your room. My suggestion, if you're worried about the above scenario happening, is... Um.... well, never mind, I can't think of one. Rest assured though, it most certainly will not. Your materials will not disappear and you will not have to insist to an unbelieving world that this happened. I'm sorry to have made you worry, but thank you for reading my review anyway.
(Aerogel, an ultralight material that is 10X stronger than steel and yet weighs only a tiny bit more than air. Photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech).
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You're in a lovely antique shop and you've just profaned against every law of kinesthetic awareness by tripping over your own feet. You're committed now. Committed to one of those falls that seems to turn you into a temporal torpedo. You know the ones: You pitch forward, arms outstretched, sometimes windmilling, angled in just such a way that the clumsy aerodynamic qualities of your forehead masticate the surrounding space-time like a Brontosaurus chewing a tough steak, making your
Picture this:You're in a lovely antique shop and you've just profaned against every law of kinesthetic awareness by tripping over your own feet. You're committed now. Committed to one of those falls that seems to turn you into a temporal torpedo. You know the ones: You pitch forward, arms outstretched, sometimes windmilling, angled in just such a way that the clumsy aerodynamic qualities of your forehead masticate the surrounding space-time like a Brontosaurus chewing a tough steak, making your stutter stepping feel finite but unbounded. Like you'll just keep going across the universe until you arrive back at the beginning. Your face red like a Maraschino cherry.
If you've never experienced one of these infinite fumbles, count yourself lucky.
First you shoulder tackle a rack full of pencils, sending a spray of wood and graphite before you like the prow of an abandoned cruiser. You only have a moment to concern yourself over the fact that there were so many writing implements in an antique shop before you're then spellbound by Van der Waals forces, which allow the layers of graphite to slide against one another and off onto your paper whenever you take a notion to sketch a monster truck vomiting snakes.
Congratulating yourself on pirouetting away from the shelf full of precious metals, you imagine their atomic nuclei embedded in a pudding of delocalized electrons, and understand how this property, the free movement of electrons, allows them to be good conductors of heat and electricity. It also makes for malleability, which is damn handy for crafting a katana, a gilded toilet, or the titanium bust of Eratosthenes that makes all visitors to your house feel a vague unease because you're just not that good with faces. It's also a source of strength, and they would've done a damn sight better at resisting your plyometric assault. They're also quite sparkly!
That's great and all, but I think we've established at this point that you're not nearly graceful enough to pull off that maneuver without there being consequences. And, sure enough, you do a little compensatory shuffle and bulldoze into a cabinet of expensive china and priceless Fabergé eggs. Shattering covalent and ionic bonds with the cellular fuel you liberated from a partially developed chicken embryo this morning. The breakdown and reassembly of chemical bonds driving you onward like an organic wrecking ball. The mortified owner of the shop calls out:
"Notice how the ceramics and glasses shatter along regular lines due to the patterns present in their crystal lattices!"
You continue through the exploded shards of history, you smile over your shoulder and toss a thumbs up to this kindly old man who moonlights as a materials scientist, rendering your next collision unavoidable. Lucky for you it's just a sheet of papyrus, which is held together by microscopic bridges of cellulose called fibrils. You tear through the collective strength of those pithy bastards with a kinetic energy roughly equivalent to a coked out Garry Bussey kick boxing a kindergartner. Unfortunately, this ancient sheet of dead plant matter was positioned in just such a way as to occlude from view a towering slab of self healing concrete.
The Proprietor: "As you well know. Concrete is quite stout. But it is prone to weathering and cracking. What we have here is Bioconcrete, which is infused with bacteria that allow for the healing of these structural damages. It's really quite fascinating!
And it would be, if you didn't painfully ricochet off of it and lose consciousness.
How did this all happen? Well, you got really excited about this book you read called Stuff Matters, which reveals the exotic dimensions of matter that go unappreciated in our daily lives. How, according to the fixed rules of electron exchange dictated by the quantized energy shells surrounding atomic nuclei, 'stuff' in all it's myriad forms most wonderful and useful, has come to define our trajectory as a species. Elated by this outlook on life, you skipped merrily into the shop, determined to survey stuff at its most peculiar and precious. Hoping, just maybe, there would be some aerogel, uranium, or anti-matter for sale. You gleefully signal to the man at the counter.
"Hi! You wouldn't ha...."
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BLACKADDER: He has patented a machine called the Ravelling Nancy.
THE PRINCE REGENT: What does it do?
BLACKADDER: It ravels cotton, Sir.
THE PRINCE REGENT: What for?
BLACKADDER: That I cannot say, Sir. I am one of those people who is quite happy to wear cotton but have
Reading this book brought to my mind a scene from the 1980s British TV comedy "Blackadder III", set during the Regency. In the scene in question, Blackadder and the Prince Regent discuss a northern industrialist who is visiting London:BLACKADDER: He has patented a machine called the Ravelling Nancy.
THE PRINCE REGENT: What does it do?
BLACKADDER: It ravels cotton, Sir.
THE PRINCE REGENT: What for?
BLACKADDER: That I cannot say, Sir. I am one of those people who is quite happy to wear cotton but have no idea how it works.
Mark Miodownik's book doesn't cover the nature and manufacture of cotton, but he chooses a number of other materials and shares his passion for telling us "how they work". He bases the book around a photo of himself, and tells the story of 10 materials captured within the photo. These are steel, paper, concrete, foam, plastic, glass, graphite, porcelain and rather oddly I thought, medical implants and chocolate. I say oddly since I've never really thought of the last two as "materials". I get of course that implants are made of a material, and I suppose chocolate is one too. Actually the chapter on chocolate answered something that has puzzled me ever since I made a trip to the USA a number of years ago, and out of curiosity decided to try one of the famous Hershey bars. I thought it was revolting and couldn't understand why American consumers would buy such a vile tasting product. The author not only explains my reaction but suggests that many Americans would feel the same way about British chocolate.
For each chapter the author provides a basic guide to the chemistry involved, as well as a history of the development of the material. For products like concrete and glass he shows how earlier materials have evolved into the high-tech products available today. With steel and porcelain, the story starts with earlier, less complex materials used for the same purposes. The only chapter I didn't like was the one on plastics. The author wrote this in the style of a fake movie script, which didn't work for me.
This is a good book for the layman, clear and easily comprehensible, and the author manages to convey quite a lot of his own enthusiasm.
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This is what he had to say about paper:
"What is it about paper that allows words to be expressed that might otherwise be kept secret? They are written in a private moment, and as such, paper lends itself to sensual love - the act of writing being one of touch, of flow, of flourish, of sweet asides and little sketches, an individuality that is free from the mechanics of
This book has forced me to face the reality that I dislike panoramic popular science so adjust your own expectations accordingly.This is what he had to say about paper:
"What is it about paper that allows words to be expressed that might otherwise be kept secret? They are written in a private moment, and as such, paper lends itself to sensual love - the act of writing being one of touch, of flow, of flourish, of sweet asides and little sketches, an individuality that is free from the mechanics of a keyboard. The ink becomes a kind of blood that demands honesty and expression, it pours on to the page, allowing thoughts to flow."
Here's a thought from my mechanical keyboard - Stick to materials science and leave this sort of soppy writing to the good folks at Harlequin Romance.
When he does stick to materials science we get good stuff like this:
"This new generation of toughened glass has a layer of plastic in its middle, which acts as a glue keeping all the shards of glass together. This layer, known as a laminate, is also the secret behind bulletproof glass, which is essentially the same technology but with several layers of plastic embedded at intervals within the glass. When a bullet hits the material, the outermost layer of glass shatters, absorbing some of the bullet's energy and blunting its tip. The bullet must then push the glass shards through the layer of plastic beneath it, which flows like tough treacle, thus spreading the force over a wider area than the point of impact. No sooner has it got through this layer than the blunted bullet encounters another layer of glass, and the process starts all over again.
"The more layers of glass and plastic there are, the more energy the bulletproof glass can absorb. One layer of laminate will stop a 9-millimeter pistol bullet, three layers will stop a .44 magnum pistol bullet, eight layers will stop a person with an AK-47 rifle from killing you."
If the author had gone into greater depth on fewer subjects and eliminated his personal ruminations this would have been a great book.
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Each chapter in this book focuses on a different material, but my personal favorite was aerogel. I mean, look at this!
There are a few types of aerogel in existence but Mr. Miodownik focuses mainly on silica aerogel. It's the world's lightest known solid that can support thousands of times its own weight, with a melting point of over 2,000° F. It has typically been used for the purposes of space exploration, but the possibilities are endless! The fact that someone could develop a material like this blew my mind.
Other materials discussed in Stuff Matters includes metal, paper, concrete, chocolate, plastic, glass, graphite, and porcelain. Mr. Miodownik discussed how each material was discovered, how the structure of each material causes it to exist and be useful, how the worlds' use of each material has evolved past to present through engineering, and the future potential of some of the materials. What was most fascinating (to me anyway) was Mr. Miodownik's discussion of psychophysics, the study of how humans sensually react to materials. For example, at checkout, some stores package purchases exclusively in paper bags versus plastic (Victoria's Secret, Yankee Candle, Trader Joe's, to name a few), which in turn causes many shoppers to feel like they have just embarked on a higher quality shopping experience. But a lot of research went into how consumers respond to the material of paper. The same goes for potato chips. Did you know that there is research devoted only to the sounds of your favorite potato chip packaging?
If anything I've commented on thus far has sparked your interest, then Stuff Matters is right up your ally. All I can say is I want to go back to college now... and if I can find more books like this one, my 2015 resolution will be a breeze!
My favorite quote:
"It is often said that there are very few places left on earth that have yet to be discovered. But those who say this are usually referring to places that exist at the human scale. Take a magnifying glass to any part of your house and you will find a whole new world to explore. Use a powerful microscope and you will find another, complete with a zoo of living organisms of the most fantastic nature. Alternatively, use a telescope and a whole universe of possibilities will open up before you."
I am a layperson when it comes to materials science and engineering. That, in some measure, makes me grateful for the person who can explain, using my vocabulary, those concepts and relationships that underlie his professional focus. Miodownik is one of the best I have ever come across, and it is clear that he enjoys talking about it with people like me. "This book is for those who want to decipher th
Yes, it took me almost two years to read this book and I am glad that I didn't rush through it.I am a layperson when it comes to materials science and engineering. That, in some measure, makes me grateful for the person who can explain, using my vocabulary, those concepts and relationships that underlie his professional focus. Miodownik is one of the best I have ever come across, and it is clear that he enjoys talking about it with people like me. "This book is for those who want to decipher the material world we have constructed and find out where these materials came from, how they work, and what they say about us."
Miodownik looks at:
Steel
Paper
Concrete
Chocolate
Foam
Plastic
Glass
Graphite
Porcelain
Implants
He shares history, examples and deeper thoughts about why this all matters. He concludes: "In a very real way, then, materials are a reflection of who we are, a multi-scale expression of our human needs and desires." He certainly has convinced me.
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4.5 Enlightened Stars
Listened to Audible. Mark Page was an excellent narrator.
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This was just fascinating for me. I loved the history of all the different materials that are around us every day. The author did a great job of making it interesting and relatable. I've already checked out another book by Mark Miodownil, Liquid Rules. I'm really looking forward to listening to it.
I thought things were going to be a bit dire when he starts with the story of how he was attacked as a teen with a razor blade on the London Underground and developed a fascination with the nature of metal, an opinion that wasn't helped by the rather self-indulgent approach of basing the book around a photograph of the author sitting on his roof terrace. But very soon the superb storytelling took over and we were into the fascinating world of Bessemer and the making of steel. In fact so well are the stories told throughout the book that the author's photograph of himself becomes an old friend and interesting as a focus. It really works.
The book has ten sections, covering metals, paper, concrete, chocolate, foam (particularly aerogel), plastic, glass, graphite, porcelain and rather bizarrely 'implant' covering both bones and artificial items in the body like screws. These are all delightful excursions into the subjects with plenty of diversions along the way.
Two of the sections, paper and plastic, are weaker than the other because Miodownik decided to try a different format for the chapter. Paper has very little content (which is perhaps why he used this approach), consisting primarily of two page spreads describing different types of paper which gets a little repetitive. Plastic is done in the form of a film script (to reflect the importance of plastic film to moving pictures), but this seemed rather strained. Miodownik is also loose with the facts in stating that 'the biggest diamond yet discovered… is an entire planet five times the Earth.' That's not science. All we know is that a star's variation suggests a companion that has the right sort of density to possibly be mostly diamond. However these blips don't damage the book's integrity.
Overall a delightful book on a subject that is relatively rarely written about – you could say the cinderella of the sciences. You will discover facts you didn't know, how basic but important elements of our lives like cement or chocolate work at the structural level – and along the way will enjoy some excellent storytelling. Recommended.
Review first published on www.popularscience.co.uk and reproduced with permission
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"For, in the end, Brea
"What is it about paper that allows words to be expressed that might otherwise be kept secret? They are written in a private moment, and as such, paper lends itself to sensual love—the act of writing being one fundamentally of touch, of flow, of flourish, of sweet asides and little sketches, an individuality that is free from the mechanics of a keyboard. The ink becomes a kind of blood that demands honesty and expression, it pours on to the page, allowing thoughts to flow.""For, in the end, Brearley did manage to create cutlery from stainless steel, and it's the transparent protective layer of chromium oxide that makes the spoon tasteless, since your tongue never actually touches the metal and your saliva cannot react with it; it has meant that we are one of the first generations who have not had to taste our cutlery."
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My favorites? Well, at the top of the list is silicon aerogel, a man-made material that has remarkable properties. As you can see in the picture below, it is translucent, as it is composed 98% of air. But it is strong, and is a fantastic heat insulation. Note in the picture that the matches are sitting on a circular disk, supported by a translucent rectangular plate that seems to have no edges. The heat of the blow torch does not reach the matches!
The chapter about chocolate is also very interesting, as it is produced in a complex process. Graphene is very interesting, too, as is the discussion about isotopes of various materials.
Mlodownik makes each material come alive, through history and entertaining anecdotes. I definitely recommend this book to all those who would like some light non-fiction.
I listened to this book as an audiobook. The narrator, Michael Page, reads this book well and helps to keep it fresh and alive.
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I learned something in each of the topics covered.
My favorite sections were on chocolate and carbon. The one I learned the most from was on glass, and the one I liked least was on cement. My geek self is happy to have been recommended this book and for finally reading it.
Each chapter takes one aspect of he picture, for example the steel legs of the table, and then he explores the social and historical detail behind the material, from how it was mined, how they used it way back in history, as well as the technological advances that happen to make the material what it is today. Some of the material he writes about are not what you would expect, chocolate for example, but in this he explains some of the chemical processes that are used to change the bitter, fibrous beans to the seductive food that is chocolate. Paper too is an unusual choice, but when you think about it, this is a material that meant that people no longer needed to rely on oral traditions and could communicate with words and drawings and pictures.
There was never a plastic age, as we have had a stone age and iron age in the past, but I think that you could safely classify the post war years in that way. The first plastics were nitrocellulose, and were used to replace Ivory billiard balls, where as now we have a whole raft of plastic types to choose from, and they can be formed and moulded in many ways. Glass to is an amazing substance. As bill Bryson said in Notes from a Small Island: call me obtuse, but you could stand me on a beach till the end of time and never would it occur to me to try to make it into windows. And it is an amazing material. Naturally fragile, it can be made much tougher by tempering it or by adding thin layers of plastic it becomes bullet proof. Concrete, like glass was a material that the Romans had, whilst they didn't have the fine control and understanding that the modern chemists and engineers have, they knew how to build with it, so much so that the Pantheon still is the largest unreinforced dome in the world and it is 2000 years old.
A morning coffee wouldn't be the same with out a cup to drink it out of, and Miodownik looks at the history of china and porcelain. The finest porcelains were perfected by the Chinese who had almost transparent cups. After the Europeans stole the technology from them, we developed our own industry here using China clay mined in Cornwall. Other material include carbon, available in the ludicrously expensive form of diamond and the much cheaper, and more useful form of graphite.
Miodownik is well qualified to write this too, he is Professor of Materials at UCL, and his boundless enthusiasm for any and all materials comes across vividly in this book, just like you would see him on the telly in fact. Even though he is vastly experienced and knowledgeable, this is a popular science book, and really does not go into a huge amount of depth on each subject. The writing style is chatty, which will annoy some people no doubt, and I am not sure who convinced him that doing the chapter on plastics as a play would work, because it doesn't. All that said, this is a good introduction to the things that we see, use, sit on, write with and drink from every day; 3.5 stars though.
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He has logically organized by
Mark Miodownik, author of 'Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World', writes in a conversational style about materials, using history, personal anecdotes and concise science facts to explain what the everyday stuff we use to eat, sit on, read and work in is made of. Despite the easygoing explanations, he is a man who knows 'stuff'. Miodownik is a professor at University College in London, which has an extensive materials library.He has logically organized by chapter facts and stories of a particular material, such as paper, steel, cement, rubber, glass, foam, chocolate and denim. There are simple, but understandable hand-drawings as well as photos.
One of the things I learned about cement is some cement is being experimentally infused with a type of bacteria which eats starch that has been embedded into the original cement; and soon the little buggers are defecating mineral calcite, a component of cement. Thus, 'self-healing' cement was invented, with bacteria reducing structural cement cracks which occur over time! While proven to work in the lab, I guess commercial versions are in the future. Still, cement excreting bacteria curing the problem of the deterioration of reinforced cement tickles my sense of the absurd! Scientists are wonderful.
The level of science is the kind professors teach to art majors, so I suspect the book will not satisfy STEM readers. However, it is a cute little book with cute little stories about amazing materials we use everyday casually and thoughtlessly. Who knew knowing 'stuff' could be fascinating? Pun intended, gentle reader ; )
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Well, my strange kin, that is what this book is. It is the whys, wheres, and whens of a some of the most common place items and objects with enough tangential
Are you one of those people who once excitedly sat down to watch "How it's Made" only to be utterly disappointed by the fact that it's basically just a bunch of B-reel of machines doing everything and no narrated exploration as to what chemicals are used along with the whys and hows that allowed them to settle on their usage to begin with?Well, my strange kin, that is what this book is. It is the whys, wheres, and whens of a some of the most common place items and objects with enough tangential information drops to make this once disappointed man all fuzzy with electric fluttering of joy.
Miodownik has written a humorous, informative, and anecdotal book that is as fun for us to read as it was for him to write. If this could be expanded and turned into a science textbook I would throw myself back into college to get my Teacher's Certificate and teach the class myself.
You'd do that for me, right, Mark? Mark? Mr. Miodownik? Damn.
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"Quit telling me "interesting" things about cement and concrete!" -Shae
The kind of book that makes you wonder at the world again. This week I've caught myself holding grains of sand up close to my eye, gently stroking glass, trying to taste stainless steel, and staring at everyday concrete like I'm in the Louvre.
Reread while in London August 2016."Quit telling me "interesting" things about cement and concrete!" -Shae
The kind of book that makes you wonder at the world again. This week I've caught myself holding grains of sand up close to my eye, gently stroking glass, trying to taste stainless steel, and staring at everyday concrete like I'm in the Louvre.
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"We inhabit an immaterial world, too: the world of our minds, our emotions, and our perceptions. But the material world, although separate, is not entirely divorced from these worlds—it strongly influences them, as anyone knows."
Brilliant , well written , humorous , wide encompassing! Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Miodownik covers all the bases in a fast paced , engaging and humorous style which actually even includes a screenplay penned b
"We inhabit an immaterial world, too: the world of our minds, our emotions, and our perceptions. But the material world, although separate, is not entirely divorced from these worlds—it strongly influences them, as anyone knows."
Brilliant , well written , humorous , wide encompassing! Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Miodownik covers all the bases in a fast paced , engaging and humorous style which actually even includes a screenplay penned by the author to bring alive the invention of plastics . Bring Alive ! That is the biggest takeaway from the book as Mark literally animates the physical world of materiality with carefully researched and humorously narrated anecdotes.
"Along the way, we find that, as with people, the real differences between materials are deep below the surface, a world that is shut off from most unless they have access to sophisticated scientific equipment."
Mark sets out his philosophy in the opening few pages itself . He is crystal clear that the account is not one merely of the physical and functional properties of materiality . Each and every material he discusses is brought to life in vivid hues in its full historical , cultural , emotional and philosophical connotations. He even has a name for such an approach to the physical , an institutionalised academic discipline , Psychophysics .
"But there is also a scientific discipline especially dedicated to systematically investigating our sensual interactions with materials. This discipline, called psychophysics, has made some very interesting discoveries."
He sets the tone of such an approach at the very outset and we strangely find the chapters labelled Indomitable , Trusted, Fundamental , Delicious ( we thought we were reading material science ? )etc. for each separate material that he takes up . Such a welcome perspective really keeps one hooked . For example , he says about stainless steel :
"It reflects back to us our feeling of modernity, of being clinical, and of having conquered grime, and the dirt and messiness of life. Of being indomitable ourselves."
And again , about paper :
"
The yellowing and disintegration of paper are disturbing, and yet, like all antiques, paper gains an authenticity and power from its patina of age. The sensual impressions of old paper allow you to enter the past much more readily, providing a portal to that world."
This is not to say that he has missed out on the technical and commercial details of his materials . Again , he has conveyed the sheer wide encompass and impact of these wonderful materials in anecdotal style :
"Without plastics, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—and all other movies —would never have existed; neither would the cinema matinee, nor the cinema itself, and our visual culture would be very different indeed. So although I am no fan of excessive plastic packaging, I hopeI've shown that, if there is one place a plastic candy wrapper should feel safe and appreciated, it is to be a movie theatre."
And again ,
"Vinyl changed music, how we recorded it and how we listened to it, and along the way it created rock stars"
And Mark also voices his reflections on interesting alternate history scenarios:
"Whether it was the lack of these two crucial optical instruments ( microscope and telescope) that prevented the Chinese from capitalizing on their technological superiority and instigating a scientific revolution, as happened in the West in the seventeenth century, is impossible to say."
All in all , a very well written book that would satiate both general and technical readers alike !
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One of the most fundamental of these material structures is the atom, but it is not the only structure of importance. At the larger scales there are dislocations, crystals, fibers, scaffolds, gels, and foams, to name a few that have been featured in this book. Taken in isolation, these structures are like characters in a story, each contributing something to its overall shape. Sometimes one character dominates, but it is only when they are put back together that they explain fully why materials behave the way they do.
Just like characters in a story - no character can stand on their own, and it is through interaction with others that makes them who they are. Similarly, we all have relationships with our material world and through our interaction with our smartphones, laptops, clothes, books, writing instruments, eating utensils, drinking receptacles, etc, etc, they bring personal meaning to our daily lives.
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These and other more cheerful questions ("Why doesn't a spoon taste like anything?", "Who was the recipient of the first stapler?") are answered in this worthwhile book, which falls into a certain "science for
Although I enjoyed reading this book, I wish to complain briefly about the inclusion at Kindle location 184 of a Bosnian man named Radivoke (perhaps Radivoje) Lajic, whose picture I offer for your consideration:
Summary of complaint for busy people: The claim below of Radivoke Lajic is (to put the politest possible spin on it) unproven and should not be presented as fact in a non-fiction book by a major publisher.
Details: Radivoke Lajic claims that meteorites have struck his home with great frequency. Lajic's explanation: "I am obviously being targeted by extraterrestrials."
Patient Zero of this preposterous (there! I've said it!) bit of pre-Trump fake news is apparently The Daily Telegraph of London. This newspaper, founded in 1855 and once possessing a reputation for "quality", apparently found that
its original 2008 clickbait story on Lajic had legs so they doubled-down with an equally-knuckleheaded 2010 followup. In short order, lazy journalists all over the world, who have apparently sacrificed all dignity in the pursuit of "content", re-wrote the story just enough to escape prosecution and slapped it into what pathetic electronic and/or print publication it was their ill-fortune to work for. (See examples from the New York Daily News, Gizmodo, and, perhaps most shamefully (younger readership, more impressionable minds), Discover Magazine.) And it found its way into this book.
This story further fries my biscuit when it alleges that scientists at "Belgrade University" are examining the rock and otherwise taking this seriously. The problem is there is no Belgrade University. University of Belgrade, yes, but no Belgrade University. It took me two minutes to discover this on the Interwebs. Perhaps you may think that I'm making a big deal out of nothing, but, if you were reading a publication and it claimed that experts from the University of Harvard were working on some problem, wouldn't you perhaps feel a little skeptical about whether these so-called experts exist? Perhaps it's too much to expect the New York Daily News or Discover Magazine to dispatch a correspondent, but how about the Daily Telegraph? They must have had someone on the group to get the picture and "facts" in the first place.
Perhaps more important than the existence or non-existence of an alleged Serbian university is just the sheer lack of interest in questioning the story. A justifiably cranky 2014 blog post attributes this to "complete credulousness", but I think it's actually due to a more-disturbing and harder-to-excuse cynicism, which says that adding another puff of smoke to the world-wide cloud of data smog is no big deal as long as you can continue to pay your mortgage.
I'd like to end a sustained bout of crankiness with a ray of hope. The place I found someone speaking a lick of sense about this whole matter was on the bulletin board of the newspaper column "The Straight Dope", when poster CalMeacham posited:
His house was hit once by a meteorite, and he misinterprets other sounds and vibrations as more meteorite hits, then goes looking for the meteorite and finds other pieces of that first one. Once he finds them, of course, he stops, so he doesn't find the other pieces, until his next misinterpreted meteorite strike, when he goes out prospecting again. I like this interpretation -- it doesn't require him to be a liar, and meteorites have been known to fracture in the air or on impact. And it doesn't require a statistical anomaly. (If this is the case, all his meteorites will be identical -- no mixture of stony meteorites and iron-nickel ones.)I agree and also like this interpretation because, in the 2010 Telegraph article, it says that the alleged additional meteor strikes only happen when it is raining – when you are likely to be inside your house, sheltered from the wind, listening and interpreting the sounds of your house settling.
It seems likely I will never know the truth about Radivoke Lajic, but it won't bother me as much as the fact that I still don't understand (and have wondered for decades) why giant slabs of concrete, standing in the mighty rivers and supporting the bridges in and out of the world's great cities, don't eventually get all soggy and mushy. The closest thing this book gets to an explanation is to say that concrete is waterproof, but it also says the concrete, while waterproof, is never completely dry and has water in it. I think I'll have to hire an endearing moppet to ask around for an explanation.
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The book is so well written. The writer goes on describing the interesting facts, science & history of mainly 11 materials from the picture below in 11 different chapters with his attractive & sophisti
This is an interesting book. I have enjoyed it so much. The writer has been obsessed with material science since an early incidence of hijack where he was back stabbed by a sharp steel razor blade. Eventually he completed his PhD in material science from Oxford & is currently working in this field.The book is so well written. The writer goes on describing the interesting facts, science & history of mainly 11 materials from the picture below in 11 different chapters with his attractive & sophisticated narrative.
There were a couple of off-trail rides, inserting a playlet in the middle, but I get it - exploring new ways to "science." Mentioned often, the author is very attached to the Six Million Dollar Man (Steve Austin / Lee Majors)
Stuff DOES matter! Mark Miodownik starts with the basics, concrete, dirt, and it's a science slide! I loved this book and was scheming on the many ways I could get my peeps in the car on a road trip and slip this in on them. . . .they'd love it and learn cool stuff as well!There were a couple of off-trail rides, inserting a playlet in the middle, but I get it - exploring new ways to "science." Mentioned often, the author is very attached to the Six Million Dollar Man (Steve Austin / Lee Majors) 1973 - 1978 as an illustration of all things-sciencey. I get that.
Mr. Miodownik's writing style reminded me of Mary Roach's approaches to a topic and I've read all her books. I'm excited that there are more of these books to enjoy learning about the world. Again - if you want something different, this is a very good choice - not dry and dusty at all.
Enjoy your science!
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First, thanks to Quest Scouts for introducing me to this book. I would have never read it had it not been an objective for the Prism & Light quest. In full disclosure, I tried to read this last summer and got nowhere. I had checked it out of the local library, but could not concentrate on the text. I read almost exclusively on the Kindle. Wanting to bang out this objective, I purchased the book.
The science presented here is in layman's terms. I appreciated that. I was able to follow all the
Wow!First, thanks to Quest Scouts for introducing me to this book. I would have never read it had it not been an objective for the Prism & Light quest. In full disclosure, I tried to read this last summer and got nowhere. I had checked it out of the local library, but could not concentrate on the text. I read almost exclusively on the Kindle. Wanting to bang out this objective, I purchased the book.
The science presented here is in layman's terms. I appreciated that. I was able to follow all the "sciency" talk because Miodownik presented the material well. While no Pulitzer writer, I very much enjoyed the writing style of this book. I made a note after the plastics chapter that I thought he and I would get a long well. The way he brooded over the discussion at the candy counter at the theater and then developed a chapter-long response to swat down his opponent was masterful! That he chose to write the chapter as a screenplay just was absolutely perfect! This is my kind of snark.
The chocolate chapter was brilliantly written as well. Frankly, I do not eat sweets as a carnivore, but after reading that I looked for a piece in our cupboard. No, we didn't have any. He described the melting of the chocolate in one's mouth in such expressive fashion.
The entire book centers around a mundane photograph. I like how he used that to develop each chapter. Clever.
The beginning of the book details a horrid incident in which the author was stabbed. It was the type of attention grabber I teach my students to use to get the reader interested. Wow!
I learned a few things while reading this including, "The impact in terms of energy usage of a single-use paper bag has been found to be greater than that of a plastic bag." I found that interesting.
Miodownik had moments of very good writing like this description of a shopping bag:
It comes out first in its flat-pack condition, but then its bottom is pushed out and it makes that glorious sound of thunder as the concertinaed paper sides are deployed into their upright positions. There it sits on the shop counter, like a butterfly recently emerged from its chrysalis: perfect, elegant and poised. Suddenly my purchase seems right, now that the clothes have been allocated this special receptacle to chaperone them back home.
I really enjoyed this book, something that is out of my normal reading sector. I found it accessible, interesting, and informative.
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"The materials themselves are often surprisingly obscure, despite being all around us".
Don't worry there are no phase diagrams. But, there is sufficient technical content so as to generate curiosity in these materials. I personally liked the chapter on aerogels since I too worked on highly porous silica tiles and these are amazing
All materials enthusiasts should try reading this book. The book describes 10 materials which are commonly seen around us in an extremely fun-filled and eloquent way."The materials themselves are often surprisingly obscure, despite being all around us".
Don't worry there are no phase diagrams. But, there is sufficient technical content so as to generate curiosity in these materials. I personally liked the chapter on aerogels since I too worked on highly porous silica tiles and these are amazing materials. Also, there is a chapter on chocolates which to my surprise is amazed by the technical details that have gone into the production of these chocolates.
A fascinating read. Recommended for everyone.
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