Stuff Matters: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials that Shape Our Man-made World
Jun 2013 · Penguin UK
4.5star
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272
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About this ebook
* * * 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
____________
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.
____________
'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
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
____________
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.
____________
'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
Ratings and reviews
4.5
50 reviews
Amyv
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June 1, 2024
Fantastic read or listen (the narrator is excellent in the audiobook version). I really loved Mark's style of writing, especially how he could interweave the science and cultural history of the materials we often take for granted like paper and concrete. Also, I could totally relate to the way he described some everyday items like a crisp paper bag, and how they made him feel. Highly recommend his books if you enjoy chemistry, history and material culture.
Juraj Woletz
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December 6, 2016
Some fascinating facts about materials that surround us but there is plenty of personal anectodes from author point of view, which distracted me from the main theme and were boring. Writing style was more entertaining I wished from a non fiction book.
2 people found this review helpful
Dhruva Narayan
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August 5, 2019
some of the chapters are extremely interesting and some are actually quite boring. it's a good book for people interested in chemistry as it deals with the atomic/molecular structures of different materials. Very intriguing and thought provoking book. makes you wonder about all the things that surround you that you hardly give a second thought to.
2 people found this review helpful
About the author
A Financial Times Master of Science and chosen by The Times as one of the 100 most influential scientists in the UK, Mark Miodownik is Professor of Materials and Society at University College London, where he is also Director of the Institute of Making. He is the author of the book Stuff Matters – a New York Times bestseller which won the Royal Society Winton Prize – and Liquid, which was shortlisted for the same prize. He presents BBC TV and radio programmes on science and engineering such as Everyday Miracles and How It Works.
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