Stuff Matters
The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials that Shape Our Man-made World
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4.4 • 17 Ratings
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- £5.49
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
* * * Winner of the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books * * *
FROM THE TEA-CUP TO THE JET ENGINE, STUFF MATTERS IS A UNIQUE, INSPIRING EXPLORATION OF HUMAN CREATIVITY.
'Enthralling. A mission to re-acquaint us with the wonders of the fabric that sustains our lives' Guardian
'I stayed up all night reading this book' Oliver Sacks
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Everything is made of something.
The everyday objects: paper clips, the textiles that make your clothes and the cups you drink from. The extraordinary new materials: self-healing metals, silicon chips and bionic implants paving the future. Stuff Matters reveals the miracles of craft, design, engineering and ingenuity that surround us every day.
From ancient technologies to those shaping our future, this is a book to inspire amazement and delight at mankind's material creativity.
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'A certain sort of madness may be necessary to pull off what he has attempted here, which is a wholesale animation of the inanimate: Miodownik achieves precisely what he sets out to' The Times
'Insightful, fascinating. The futuristic materials will elicit gasps. Makes even the most everyday substance seem exciting' Sunday Times
'Wonderful. Miodownik writes well enough to make even concrete sparkle' Financial Times
'Expert, deftly written, immensely enjoyable' Observer
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Miodownik, director of the Institute of Making at University College London, writes a fascinating introduction to materials science, a discipline unfamiliar to most outside it. To "tell the story of stuff" he takes a photo of himself enjoying a cup of tea on his London rooftop, and proceeds to examine 10 of the materials in the photo. These materials (concrete, glass, plastics, etc.) are ubiquitous in the modern world and possess their own chemistry and history. Miodownik includes himself in his discussions so that, in the chapter on biomaterials, readers learn about his fillings as well as his disappointment that when he broke a leg as a child he didn't receive the same upgrades as the Six Million Dollar Man. His humor helps highlight such facts as we are one of the first generations to not taste our cutlery, due to the properties of stainless steel, or that "the biggest diamond yet discovered... is orbiting a pulsar star" and is "five times the size of Earth." In his chapter on paper, he describes the book as "a fortress for words," while he regards chocolate as "one of our greatest engineering creations." Miodownik's infectious curiosity and explanatory gifts will inspire readers to take a closer look at the materials around them.
Customer Reviews
Why so little colour?
It’s clear there were lovely photographs in this book, why is the digital version missing these?
Change the cover!
Please update the cover to the new artwork – the photo one of the materials.
Good book, apart from the digital version's awful cover.
Great so far
I am 3 chapters in to the book out of a total of 10. As a materials engineering student thrills in my field are quite often a rarity, but this book breathes a new vigour and understanding into my knowledge with the stories that led to the materials that make up our every day lives. Science combines with stories to deliver a historical telling of each material discussed. The author is a clear expert and makes the most boring of materials (concrete, paper and foam, for example) sound interesting.