Stuff matters Exploring the marvelous materials that shape our man-made world

Review by Choice Review

Inventories of failure emerge with each catastrophe, alerting people to not take materials for granted: Challenger fell from the sky, and the World Trade Center collapsed. The Mianus River bridge disappeared into darkness and cars and trucks followed, and the fuselage on the British Comet failed. Tires wear out, blow out, and peel off. Meanwhile, people's skin loses elasticity and slowly wrinkles because of the long-term effects of gravity. Human life depends on materials that support and sustain, protect, and provide for it. As the title indicates, stuff does matter! Nowhere has that message been better written or with more style and charm than by Miodownik (materials science, Univ. College London, UK). He relates his version of the facts in chapters such as "Fundamental" (about concrete), "Delicious" (about chocolate), "Indomitable" (about steel), and "Trusted" (about paper). In a dozen chapters, including a scary-dare one say-"cutting edge" introduction, the author has seductively interwoven literary and scientific magic. It is just right for scientists and engineers and for real people too, who live in a materials world. Everyone will be pleased. Do not miss a word. --L. W. Fine, Columbia University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by New York Times Review

I ONCE MET a man with magic in his pocket. He was a former hairdresser named Maurice Ward, and the magic was a material he invented called Starlite. He said it was one of the most astonishing thermal barriers in the world and had been tested in high-profile labs, including a British atomic weapons facility, where it withstood several simulated nuclear flashes. Despite its dizzying potential - fireproof airplanes, laser-resistant tanks - Starlite never ventured far out of Ward's pocket, because he refused to sell or reveal its recipe before his death a couple of years ago. I mention this because it still intrigues me, as a good mystery should, and because it was my first encounter with the head-scratching, captivating possibilities of man-made materials. Mark Miodownik's book was the second. The mundanity of the title may be deliberate, for "Stuff Matters" is about hidden wonders, the astonishing properties of materials we think boring, banal and unworthy of attention - paper, concrete, glass, plastic. They are given what the sociologist Erving Goffman called "civil inattention," lumped together under the ample but unilluminating category of "stuff," even though some varieties of that stuff have been so important, historically, that eras have been named after them: Stone, Bronze, Iron. Miodownik is a professor of materials and society at University College London. Along with that marvelous title, he has a Ph.D. in jet engine alloys, one of the more pleasingly niche Ph.D.s I've heard of. But that might all have been immaterial - sorry - if he couldn't also write, if he didn't know that starting a book, "As I stood on a train bleeding from what would later be classified as a 13-centimeter stab wound, I wondered what to do," would pull readers into his world, as surely as iron to magnets. He describes being stunned by the stabbing (an attempted robbery), but also by the staple that held together the police report. The assailant's razor blade was steel, and so was the humble staple. How could one be so unbendingly sharp and the other bend? The answer is that materials have inner lives. Materials are seen as solids, but inside they are fluid. They transform, often puzzlingly, so that the metal in a paper clip or staple can bend, because metals are composed of crystals, and they bend too. The discipline of material sciences may be recent, but our efforts to transform materials into useful forms are ancient. Dislocating crystals by heating malachite and getting copper was "a spectacular growth in human technology." The pyramids were built using 300,000 copper chisels. Similarly, the book's structure is simple only at first glance. It begins with a photograph of Miodownik on his London rooftop that cleverly gives us the book's essential elements, among them an ostentatious glass building in the background known as the Shard, a ceramic teacup, a book and Converse sneakers. Miodownik takes us into the shrouded architecture and history of each of these materials, drawing on "psychophysics," the study of how humans react sensually to materials. Psychophysics wants to know why we accept steel for kitchen sinks but not for toilets, why we wax lyrical about a wooden floor or a cast-iron railway station but rarely about an ordinary window made from the wonderful invention that is glass (when, after all, it took an impressive imagination for someone to walk along a beach, look at the sand and see windows). Each chapter's material is also given an attribute; plastic is "imaginative," porcelain is "refined." Some sections are more successful than others. The psychophysical perspective on paper ("trusted") doesn't persuade, for a start. I don't think that a love letter is a "simulacrum of the loved one's skin," or that unwrapping a present is like giving the gift inside a new birth. It's impossible to argue with chocolate's classification as "delicious," however. Miodownik loves chocolate; he eats it twice a day, every day. The science is equally appetizing. Chocolate is a "material poem," as wondrous as steel or concrete, "designed to transform into a liquid as soon as it hits your mouth. This trick is the culmination of hundreds of years of culinary and engineering effort." I like chocolate too, but perhaps not enough to crave so many pages on its triglycerides. Never mind. Forays into Science 101 are quickly interrupted by some Honduran farmers, fermenting cocoa beans in piles in a jungle to yield fruity ester molecules that turn bitter cocoa into sweeter chocolate, or Japanese smiths who make "chewy" metal for samurai swords. Concrete's chapter attribute is "fundamental." It is, of course, but its place in our affections is more wobbly, which makes Miodownik's discussion of the Shard glass tower so intriguing. The structure's reinforced concrete core is the real wonder; its combination of steel, concrete and water forms an internal architecture that will strengthen itself, for years. The Shard is concrete done right, but badly mixed concrete, with too much or too little water, crumbles in earthquakes. We can't know how many "concrete time bombs" are weakening to dangerous levels, invisibly and lethally, but we will continue to find out, disastrously. Molecules and materials are captivating characters, but there are others. A Miodownik grandparent spraying mucus over the dining room table. Exploding billiard balls, in several scenes of a mock Wild West movie. Rayleigh scattering and Janus particles (the construction blocks of e-book reading), and silica aerogel, a material that is 99.8 percent air, and which Miodownik compares to holding a piece of sky (a lovely image that loses some power when repeated a few pages later). Invented in the 1930s by an American farmer and chemist named Samuel Kistler, aerogel "ended up being used ignominiously as a thickening agent in screwworm salves for sheep." Kistler died unaware that aerogel would be adopted by NASA to catch the passing particles of comets. From screwworm to stardust. Materials, Miodownik concludes, are so much more than "blobs of differently colored matter." They are wonders - "self-healing concrete," a jelly that catches stars. I now know to read up on concrete, a previously unthinkable activity, and I'll never think of Tutankhamen without remembering that he was found wearing a scarab with a piece of natural glass 26 million years old that was probably forged by a meteor that struck the white sands of the Libyan desert. It's possible this science and these stories have been told elsewhere, but like the best chocolatiers, Miodownik gets the blend right. ROSE GEORGE is the author of "Ninety Percent of Everything" and "The Big Necessity."

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [July 20, 2014]

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Review by Booklist Review

University professor Miodownik accomplishes a bit of a miracle here by making a discussion of materials science not only accessible but witty as well. Spinning out of a surprisingly personal introduction, this Bill Brysonesque study of steel, paper, chocolate, and more takes readers deeply inside the history of the 11 common materials captured in a photograph taken of the author relaxing on his outdoor deck. Miodownik has a genial style as he dives into the science of chemical compositions with aplomb, then pivots into thoughtful considerations of wine glasses, wrapping paper, joint replacements, and the concrete construction of the John F. Kennedy International Airport. With boundless enthusiasm, he turns considerations of the most mundane of topics into dazzling tours of ancient Rome and Willy Wonka's factory, along with a look at the intricacies of Samurai sword making. At a time when science is maligned, first-rate storyteller Miodownik entertains and educates with pop-culture references, scholarly asides, and nods to everyone from the Six Million Dollar Man to the Luminere brothers. A delight for the curious reader.--Mondor, Colleen Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

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. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

Starred Review. Ever wonder how concrete is made? Why chocolate gets white spots when it heats up then cools down again? What makes diamond and graphite, two allotropes of carbon, behave so differently? Miodownik (materials and society, Univ. Coll. of London; Computational Materials Engineering) answers all of these questions and more through relating his personal experiences with each type of material. The author explores the worlds of the grandiose as he watches the construction of the Shard in London, Europe's tallest building; and the miniscule, as he examines how small pores can lead to fractures in terra cotta, but similar fractures can be stopped in plaster (like that in a cast) by applying it over cloth. Miodownik introduces enough chemistry to explain, as his title suggests, the stuff that matters, but relates the science in such a way that the book should be accessible to all readers. VERDICT Recommended for anyone who wants to learn more about the materials that make up the world around them. John Kromer, Miami Univ. of Ohio Lib., Oxford, OH (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A compact, intense guided tour through a handful of physical materials, from concrete to chocolate, revealing what makes them profoundly affect our lives.Materials make up everything, including us, writes Miodownik (Materials and Society/ University Coll. London), and knowing something of their history, cultural influence and psychophysics (the science of our sensual interaction with them) is a gateway to understanding the world's inner and outer complexities. The author writes with enthusiasm, empathy and gratitude, making us care for concrete or foam as much as for Mr. Darcy or the Artful Dodger. He begins with the story of his stabbing by a panhandler with a razor knife. Being a schoolboy at the time, Miodownik was less concerned with his survival than he was fascinated by the razor. What a remarkable thing, to cut through all that winter clothing and still deliver a deep wound, he thought. What is steel, anyway? From there, he takes us through the miracle of alloys: why hammering a metal makes it stronger, why we likely wouldn't have the pyramids without copper, what the samurai's sword has in common with the compass' needle. A photograph of himself having a cup of tea on the roof of his apartment building launches his exploration of the materials that make up his surroundings: paper, concrete, chocolate and its divine transformation of state, from bitter bean to "pure dark chocolate in your mouth [that] start[s] to liquefy" as the cocoa butter crystals commence to wobble. Miodownik investigates everything from the brilliant thermal properties of silica aerogel, used in insulation, to the atomic arrangement of diamonds, which have an "unusually high optical dispersion" that we call sparkle. Why we are so taken with porcelain and why a newspaper rustles are not mysteries to Miodownik, who helps us understand the complexity of inner structures.Puts the wonder and strangeness back into all the truly magical stuff that comprises our everyday reality. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Introduction As I stood on a train bleeding from what would later be classified as a thirteen-centimeter stab wound, I wondered what to do. It was May 1985, and I had just jumped on to a London Tube train as the door closed, shutting out my attacker, but not before he had slashed my back. The wound stung like a very bad paper cut, and I had no idea how serious it was, but being a schoolboy at the time, embarrassment overcame any sort of common sense. So instead of getting help, I decided the best thing would be to sit down and go home, and so, bizarrely, that is what I did. To distract myself from the pain, and the uneasy feeling of blood trickling down my back, I tried to work out what had just happened. My assailant had approached me on the platform asking me for money. When I shook my head he got uncomfortably close, looked at me intently, and told me he had a knife. A few specks of spit from his mouth landed on my glasses as he said this. I followed his gaze down to the pocket of his blue anorak. I had a gut feeling that it was just his index finger that was creating the pointed bulge. Even if he did have a knife, it must be so small to fit in that pocket that there was no way it could do me much damage. I owned penknives myself and knew that such a knife would find it very hard to pierce the several layers that I was wearing: my leather jacket, of which I was very proud, my gray wool school blazer beneath it, my nylon V-neck sweater, my cotton white shirt with obligatory striped school tie half knotted, and cotton vest. A plan formed quickly in my head: keep him talking and then push past him on to the train as the doors were closing. I could see the train arriving and was sure he wouldn't have time to react. Funnily enough I was right about one thing: he didn't have a knife. His weapon was a razor blade wrapped in tape. This tiny piece of steel, not much bigger than a postage stamp, had cut through five layers of my clothes, and then through the epidermis and dermis of my skin in one slash without any problem at all. When I saw that weapon in the police station later, I was mesmerized. I had seen razors before of course, but now I realized that I didn't know them at all. I had just started shaving at the time, and had only seen them encased in friendly orange plastic in the form of a Bic safety razor. As the police quizzed me about the weapon, the table between us wobbled and the razor blade sitting on it wobbled too. In doing so it glinted in the fluorescent lights, and I saw clearly that its steel edge was still perfect, unaffected by its afternoon's work. Later I remember having to fill in a form, with my parents anxiously sitting next to me and wondering why I was hesitating. Perhaps I had forgotten my name and address? In truth I had started to fixate on the staple at the top of the first page. I was pretty sure this was made of steel too. This seemingly mundane piece of silvery metal had neatly and precisely punched its way through the paper. I examined the back of the staple. Its two ends were folded snugly against one another, holding the sheaf of papers together in a tight embrace. A jeweler could not have made a better job of it. (Later I found out that the first stapler was hand-made for King Louis XV of France with each staple inscribed with his insignia. Who would have thought that staplers have royal blood?) I declared it "exquisite" and pointed it out to my parents, who looked at each other in a worried way, thinking no doubt that I was having a nervous breakdown. Which I suppose I was. Certainly something very odd was going on. It was the birth of my obsession with materials--starting with steel. I suddenly became ultra-sensitive to its being present everywhere. I saw it in the tip of the ballpoint pen I was using to fill out the police form; it jangled at me from my dad's key ring while he waited, fidgeting; later that day it sheltered and took me home, covering the outside of our car in a layer no thicker than a postcard. Strangely, I felt that our steel Mini, usually so noisy, was on its best behavior that day, materially apologizing for the stabbing incident. When we got home I sat down next to my dad at the kitchen table, and we ate my mum's soup together in silence. Then I paused, realizing I even had a piece of steel in my mouth. I consciously sucked the stainless steel spoon I had been eating my soup with, then took it out and studied its bright shiny appearance, so shiny that I could even see a distorted reflection of myself in it. "What is this stuff?" I said, waving the spoon at my dad. "And why doesn't it taste of anything?" I put it back in my mouth to check, and sucked it assiduously. Then a million questions poured out. How is it that this one material does so much for us, and yet we hardly talk about it? It is an intimate character in our lives--we put it in our mouths, use it to get rid of unwanted hair, drive around in it--it is our most faithful friend, and yet we hardly know what makes it tick. Why does a razor blade cut while a paper clip bends? Why are metals shiny? Why, for that matter, is glass transparent? Why does everyone seem to hate concrete but love diamond? And why is it that chocolate tastes so good? Why does any material look and behave the way it does? Since the stabbing incident, I have spent the vast majority of my time obsessing about materials. I've studied materials science at Oxford University, I've earned a PhD in jet engine alloys, and I've worked as a materials scientist and engineer in some of the most advanced laboratories around the world. Along the way, my fascination with materials has continued to grow--and with it my collection of extraordinary samples of them. These samples have now been incorporated into a vast library of materials built together with my friends and colleagues Zoe Laughlin and Martin Conreen. Some are impossibly exotic, such as a piece of NASA aerogel, which being 99.8 percent air resembles solid smoke; some are radioactive, such as the uranium glass I found at the back of an antique shop in Australia; some are small but stupidly heavy, such as ingots of the metal tungsten extracted painstakingly from the mineral wolframite; some are utterly familiar but have a hidden secret, such as a sample of self-healing concrete. Taken together, this library of more than a thousand materials represents the ingredients that built our world, from our homes, to our clothes, to our machines, to our art. The library is now located and maintained at the Institute of Making which is part of University College London. You could rebuild our civilization from the contents of this library, and destroy it too. Yet there is a much bigger library of materials containing millions of materials, the biggest ever known, and it is growing at an exponential rate: the manmade world itself. Consider the photograph opposite. It pictures me drinking tea on the roof of my flat. It is unremarkable in most ways, except that when you look carefully it provides a catalog of the stuff from which our whole civilization is made. This stuff is important. Take away the concrete, the glass, the textiles, the metal, and the other materials from the scene, and I am left naked shivering in midair. We may like to think of ourselves as civilized, but that civilization is in a large part bestowed by material wealth. Without this stuff, we would quickly be confronted by the same basic struggle for survival that animals are faced with. To some extent, then, what allows us to behave as humans are our clothes, our homes, our cities, our stuff, which we animate through our customs and language. (This becomes very clear if you ever visit a disaster zone.) The material world is not just a display of our technology and culture, it is part of us. We invented it, we made it, and in turn it makes us who we are. Excerpted from Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World by Mark Miodownik All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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