From plastics to smart materials to never-before-seen composites, scientists have transformed the raw materials of the wilderness into the stuff of the modern world. Now, award-winning journalist Ivan Amato explores this fascinating science.Prehistory was stuck in the Stone Age partly because it lacked the scientific know-how to smelt iron from rocky ores. The Industrial Revolution owed its birth to the geniuses who figured out how to make large amounts of steel. Postwar America can thank or hang in effigy John Wesley Hyatt, who gave us plastics. And twenty-first-century America may well rise, or fall, depending on how far ahead it remains in the development of smart materials. The most important factor in technological progress today is the ability of the materials scientist to take apart and reconfigure the physical stuff of the world into substances that have never existed naturally on Earth.Much more than a history of the material sciences, Stuff brims with interviews with cutting-edge experts in the field, many of whom are building new materials literally atom by atom, and describes such astounding achievements as artificial diamonds created from peanut butter and how nanotechnologists are building new-age, state-of-the-art machines no thicker than a few hundred atoms. Compelling and informative, it gives readers a marvelous glimpse into the modern world of technology and the smart materials that are at the forefront of tomorrow’s breakthroughs in computers, military weaponry, electronics, and more.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
"Stuff, stuff, everywhere stuff": Ivan Amato will make you appreciate how much ingenuity, history, and subtlety goes into even the most apparently mundane human-produced materials, such as paper or steel. Then he will astonish you by describing the Stuff of the future, the deliberate creations of today's materials scientists: Buckyballs, synthetic diamonds, designs crafted at the atomic level, self-healing materials, and biomimetics. A revolution is just beginning that is "comparable in scope and importance to the beginning of the scientific method."
From Library Journal
Amato has drawn upon his experience covering science and technology topics for Science News and Science to write this history of materials science. In the book's first half, he traces the subject from Olduvai Gorge to Silicon Valley, chronicling the shift from largely serendipitous discoveries to steady improvements as the result of a trial-and-error approach. Amato then looks at today's cutting-edge materials research, in which new materials that never existed in the natural world (e.g., artificial diamonds made out of peanut butter) are being developed by design. Writing in a lively, readable style that will appeal to the nonexpert, Amato manages to convey his enthusiasm for the subject. The references at the end are largely bibliographic essays of books and articles suggested for further reading on each topic. Few other books cover the history of the discipline so succinctly or engagingly. Recommended for academic libraries and public libraries with strong science collections.?Wade Lee, Univ. of Toledo Libs.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Materials Science Made Simple,
By
This review is from: Stuff: The Things The World Is Made Of (Hardcover)
Optimistic, easy-to-read, this charming history of the effect of new materials on society is filled with brilliant analogies. From the ceramics and bronze of prehistoric times through iron, steel, aluminum, polymers, transistors, silicon microchips and solid-state lasers, using personal interviews and a number of diagrams, Amato takes the reader on a joyful tour of what became Materials Science. This fount of good (but not excellent) explanations of many things is marred by a number of technical errors, and a Green Party stance on all of the current environmental issues. These flaws drag down what would have been a 5-star rating to 3 stars. The generally delicious writing style is marred by some problems with transitive verbs and a few slang expressions that may be hard to translate. Citation of sources is adequate....
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A good overview of materials science,
By A Customer
This review is from: Stuff: Materials World (Paperback)
Ivan Amato's Stuff: The Materials the World is Made of is a good, workmanlike history and description of "materials science." Basically, materials science involves the fashioning of one material of nature into another; Amato imagines the first "materials scientist" as the caveman breaking rocks to make the first tools. Modern materials science, of course, is focused much more on atomic and sub-atomic levels, and Amato does a good job describing the state of the art today. Much of his writing is a bit "gee whiz", both over-written and over-enthusiastic for my tastes. He writes clearly and in a well-organized fashion, and I learned a fair amount from this book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
GREAT,
By
This review is from: Stuff: The Things The World Is Made Of (Hardcover)
He manages to explain complicated things in a way me and you can understand them,and me makes you even more interested in the subjects he covers.
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