Nuts and Bolts
How Tiny Inventions Make Our World Work
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- 13,99 €
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- 13,99 €
Publisher Description
Shard engineer Roma Agrawal deconstructs our most complex inventions into seven fundamental objects: the nail, spring, wheel, lens, magnet, string and pump.
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'Delightful' TIM HARFORD, FINANCIAL TIMES
'Appeals to the nerdy side of just about all of us... a great book to give' JANE GARVEY
'Splendid. Clearly written, elegantly structured full of facts you are unlikely to chance on anywhere else' DAILY MAIL
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE * A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR*
Smartphones, skyscrapers, spacecraft. Modern technology seems mind-bogglingly complex. But beneath the surface, it can be beautifully simple.
Tracing their journeys through the millennia, she shows us how handmade Roman nails led to modern skyscrapers, how the potter's wheel enabled space exploration, and how humble lenses helped her conceive a child against the odds. Eye-opening and engaging, Nuts and Bolts reveals the hidden building blocks of our modern world, and shows how engineering has fundamentally changed the way we live.
'A wonderful book' MARK MIODOWNIK
'A masterclass in storytelling' JESS WADE
'A riveting love letter to the small, wonderful, and mundane things that make the modern world.' ROMAN MARS
*AS HEARD ON RADIO 4 START THE WEEK, OFF AIR WITH FI AND JANE AND 99% INVISIBLE*
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this wide-ranging history, structural engineer Agrawal (Built) surveys how seven objects—the nail, wheel, spring, magnet, lens, string, and pump—transformed the world. Arguing that these "foundational innovations" prove "how engineering at its most fundamental is inextricably linked to your everyday life," Agrawal discusses how the first bronze nails, dating to 3400 BCE Egypt, and their derivatives (rivets, screws, bolts) "enabled robust connections between different materials," an innovation so fundamental it allowed for the construction of more complex buildings and boats and today makes possible such diverse gadgetry as satellites and watches. She traces the history of each invention, noting that the first known wheels were used to make pottery in Mesopotamia around 3900 BCE before they were attached to wagons for transportation several hundred years later. The straightforward prose makes it easy to understand how such contraptions as the Piezoelectric air pump work, and Agrawal has a knack for showing how simple objects provide the bedrock for intricate technologies; for example, she explains how the spring, which "tightened up and stored energy," made possible the construction of clocks significantly smaller than previous models used in church towers, which utilized a weighted system that relied on gravity to power the gears. The result is a potent look at the building blocks of the modern world.
