Stories of the Invisible: A Guided Tour of Molecules [Hardcover]

Philip Ball (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 25, 2001

If atoms are letters, writes Philip Ball, then molecules are words. And through these words, scientists have uncovered many fascinating stories of the physical world. In Stories of the Invisible, Ball has compiled a cornucopia of tales spun by these intriguing, invisible words.
Spiced with quotations from Primo Levi, Flann O'Brien, and Thomas Pynchon, Stories of the Invisible takes us on a tour of a world few of us knew existed. The author describes, for instance, the remarkable molecular structure of spider's silk--a material that is pound for pound much stronger the steel--and shows how the Kevlar fibers in bulletproof vests were invented by imitating the alignment of molecules found in the spider's amazing thread. We also learn about the protein molecules that create movement, without which bacteria would be immobile, cells could not divide, there would be no reproduction and therefore no life. The book describes molecules shaped like miniature sculptures, containers, soccer balls, threads, rings, levers and geodesic domes, all made by sticking atoms together. Perhaps most important, Ball provides a fresh perspective on the future of molecular science, revealing how researchers are promising to reinvent chemistry as the central creative science of the 21st century. Indeed, molecular chemists will someday be able to manufacture a synthetic yet living cell and to create machines the size of bacteria, tools which they can then use to assemble new molecules to order.
Today we can invent molecules that can cure viral infections, store information, or help hold bridges together. In Stories of the Invisible, Philip Ball takes us inside an incredibly small world that has a major impact on our lives.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"Molecules," Philip Ball writes, "are the smallest units of meaning in chemistry," the words, if you will, made up of atomic letters. In this lively essay, full of such useful metaphors, Ball shares his longstanding fascination with the unseen world once again, explaining some of the issues that guide modern biochemistry.

Consider a sheep, Ball offers, a congeries of "millions of little bits of sheepness." That animal is a blend of molecules, tens of thousands of varieties of them, many of them found in the grass, sky, and water that make up the sheep's environment, many of them shared with other animals and humans. It has been the task of modern chemistry to dissect matter, to tease out underlying structures and commonalities--and, Ball adds, to learn how to make of its constituent elements things that do things, "such as cure viral infections or store information or hold bridges together." How chemistry has done so, making body armor of spider silk and modeling computer networks on "molecular logic," drives Ball's discursive, entertaining, and eminently practical survey.

A trustworthy explainer of scientific matters to lay readers, Ball writes with clarity and grace--and the more difficult the concept, the better he gets. --Gregory McNamee

From Publishers Weekly

"Kevlar [a DuPont product] is one of the best candidates... for tethering a space platform.... But gram for gram, silk is stronger still," explains Philip Ball (H2O: A Biography of Water) in Stories of the Invisible: A Guided Tour of Molecules. Thus does this Nature magazine writer and editor render practical and navigable the abstractions of invisible science. "Our metabolic processes are primarily about making molecules. Cells cannot survive without constantly reinventing themselves: making new amino acids for proteins, new lipids for membranes." But Ball's biological explanation for life, thought and action is no dry, joyless drone: "That a conspiracy of molecules might have created King Lear... makes the world seem an enchanted place." Pop-science enthusiasts will eat it up. Illus.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; First edition (October 25, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192802143
• ISBN-13: 978-0192802149
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #958,459 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #73 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Chemistry > Physical & Theoretical > Quantum Chemistry

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Customer Reviews

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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Trying to make the invisible, visible, January 13, 2002

By 

Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Stories of the Invisible: A Guided Tour of Molecules (Hardcover)

Almost all of this is about biochemistry where the molecules are large, complex and of overriding importance and interest to human beings. In particular Philip Ball, who is a science journalist and formerly an editor of Nature, one of the most prestigious science journals in the world, wants to show "the molecular processes that govern our own bodies are not so different from those that chemists--I would prefer to say molecular scientists--are seeking to create." His further intent in this modest little book is to counter the "negative connotations of <chemical> and <synthetic>" in the public mind and to help us "appreciate what chemistry has to offer." Ball observes that "molecules" do not yet have negative connotations, and he wants to keep it that way. (pp. vi-vii)

Ball demonstrates just how really complex the molecular world is, and how the technology is becoming further removed from our everyday world, while the effect on our world grows enormously. The text does not consist of "stories" as such, but rather a broad survey of molecular science, including what's happening in exciting new fields such as molecular electronics, and how new uses for molecular knowledge is transforming older fields such as paleontology, computer science, information theory, forensics, etc. Ball provides some material on cellular construction and metabolism, augmented with drawings from his own hand. He gives us a feel for the invisible, tactile reality of molecular interactions, in which surface structure is paramount. He ends the book with a brief look at the prospects for molecular and DNA computers.

There is unfortunately a kind of veil-like quality thrown between the molecular world and the reader's perception of that world by the very fact of its invisibility that I don't think Ball's text overcomes. It is curious, but it is not a question of readability so much as a question of how to present these very complex structures and ideas in a way that the reader can absorb in some concrete fashion. Ball begins with some dialogue from a fiction set in a Dublin pub about "mollycules"; however this does not help. Indeed I could not see the point of the exchange. At any rate Ball abandons it after the first few pages.

The exposition following that, about what molecules are and how they differ technically from atoms, was one of the strengths of the book. However much of the rest of the book is like a first year survey course of various topics in molecular science, a very diverse subject, but without any insistence on the mastery of fundamentals. This is good, I suppose, and Ball's intent, but since I know little about chemistry, I was left not really appreciating a lot of the text. I express this as more a failing on my part than a criticism of Ball's efforts, and to warn the reader that some serious interactive and imaginative work will be required! Ball does indeed go to great lengths to make the visible real, not only with his drawings, but with "photos" from the "scanning tunnelling microscope" while using other "representations" to make the technically invisible, "visible."

One thing that I felt very strongly in reading this book was the sense of frustration that molecular engineers and others in the world of nano technology must feel when dealing with objects so very, very small. I had the sense that somebody was crying out, "My world for a pair of molecular tweezers!" I suspect when they get those tweezers, our world is going to change enormously.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stories of the Invisible: A Guided Tour of the Molecules, October 20, 2002

By 

Joe Zika "Khemprof" (Cincinnati, Ohio) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Stories of the Invisible: A Guided Tour of Molecules (Hardcover)

Stories of the Invisible: A Guided Tour of Molecules written by Philip Ball is about chemistry, but to be more specific, a blend of biochemistry, bioelectricity, molecular biology, molecular chemistry.

This book trys, as the author stated, to give chemistry a better overall picture, but the boundries are becouming blurred, even more so when you explain molecular organic chemistry. Now, reading this book, doesn't require a degree in any of these disciplines, but a good grasp of scientific principles helps.

The narrative is easily read and is not difficult to read as the author relates to the reader what is happening in industry today. As more and more of the interworkings are understood in molecular chemistry, mankind should be reaping the benefits, making our lives easiler, and making better products. What I fould to be the most intriguing is a molecular chemical computer more on the order of the human brain.

Life in the next one hundred years will be very different than life was in the last one hundred years and mankind harnessing the molecules of life will be on the forefront. Nanothechnology is another field addressed in the book. As the author makes a good point, if we can find the tools to manipulate this technology, we pretty much can control everything.

All of the subjects within this book are invisible, but with tunneling microscopy, electron microscope, and other tool of the trade, making what was once unseen, now visible. Along with the authors hand drawn art illustrates the point quite well at times. I found the book readable with the caveat... you must have some science orientation.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Very Good for Someone who Reads One Science Book a Year, November 6, 2001

By 

Herbert Gintis (Northampton, MA USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Stories of the Invisible: A Guided Tour of Molecules (Hardcover)

Phillip Ball writes well, capably cuts through the complex stuff to get to the heart of the matter, and tells good stories. If you read one science book a year, or you want to give a gift to your Aunt Minnie who always wanted to find out why chemicals aren't all bad, this is the book for you.

I downrated this book because it doesn't really do what it says it is going to do. It purports to be about chemistry, and it has blurbs written by four Nobel Prize winners in Chemistry. The book claims it wants to restore chemistry to its rightful position among the natural sciences, having been relegated to a lowly position by New Age environmentalist non-think. However, the book spends most of its time on biochemistry, cell biology, and other biological topics! Phillip Ball does not really address his challenge, because so little of the book is about the chemistry of chemists (molecular engineers?) as opposed to biologists.

I wish Ball would write another book--this one really about chemistry. There's a great story to tell.