Customer Reviews

Why Things Break: Understanding the World by the Way It Comes Apart

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Why Things Break is one scientist's account of how he came to came to investigate the science of fracture mechanics at a molecular level--not really the how, but the why. Although the narrative is sometimes rambling, and Dr. Eberhart digresses considerably at tangents to make his points, the stories are well worth reading. It is also illustrative of the career of a scientist tackling a field that is new: full of obstacles to be overcome.

Particularly interesting--at least I found them so--are the stories of creating ever tougher and harder materials, from metal to ceramics, starting with ancient techniques thousands of years ago. If you've ever wondered how the Samurai made their swords, or how steel ultimately replaced bronze in the case of weapons, Eberhart's vignettes will delight you. The case study of Corning's Corelle line is especially instructive in demonstrating the pitfalls of trying to make commercially viable materials that don't break easily, and often one gets the impression this was a solution looking for a problem. Other fascinating examples include the sinking of the Titanic, the armor aboard the USAF's C141, and litigation involving the fracturing of a cast-iron pump.

Most of the science presented will be understandable to an arts major, although on occasion the chemistry might prove hard going--sometimes explanations in science can be tough! On pages 142-143, the author makes some errors: the WWII aircraft he cites--the Supermarine Spitfire and the Mitsubishi Zero--were not mostly made of wood; rather new aluminum alloys were used. Perhaps Erhard was thinking of the twin-engine DeHavilland Mosquito fighter-bomber.

My only criticism is that the real why of things breaking is really relegated to a couple of chapters at the end of the book, but possibly this is because still so little is known about the subject.

I bought this book because it appeared to be aimed at showcasing the field of Fracture Mechanics to the lay person - certainly a daunting task in view of the depth of knowledge normally required to understand 'why things break". I wanted to see how the author would approach such a difficult subject (and without any pictures!). To my pleasant surprise this book was much more than an attempt to do "technology transfer". Eberhart has written a semi-autobiographical text that immerses the reader in the author's metamorphosis from a young child wondering about breaking atoms in butter with his knife to a full-fledged academic professor and researcher who asks and answers "why", not "how" or "when", but "why" something broke or failed. The examples given range from understanding how glass shatters, how Correlle ware is not really unbreakable, to the tragedy of the Challenger accident and the need to listen to engineers when they become wary about a material or system entering an unknown environment. Eberhart does lament the "pecking order" of science and the politically correct way that research funding in North America is meted out, but this, in my view, is an accurate reflection of how the approach our government agencies and industries are taking to funding fundamental research is leading our society towards mediocrity, inhibiting development of revolutionary ideas that can transform society into better ways to do things much quicker. While a conservative approach can provide a safer and lower risk result, it also can significantly slow the rate at which new ideas bubble to the surface. Research must be risk-taking by its very nature. We require a better understanding of "why" things happen if we really want to develop the new innovations that improve our lives and those of others around the world in need of appropriate technological support. Furthermore, the established "pecking-order" in research prevents certain problems from being viewed in contexts that differ from the "norm". Cross disciplinary teams are needed if we wish to find innovation in the conventional. There is much food for thought in this well-written and enjoyable book.

I was attracted to this book after hearing the author on a radio interview and then reading the reviews on Amazon. I am not much of a science enthusiast, a little goes a long way, but I do like books about scientists. Both reader reviews seemed to indicate that "Why things break" is just that kind of book and it is. I so enjoyed following Dr. Eberhart's scientific development from a small child, concerned that cutting an atom would cause a nuclear explosion, to his eventual theories about bonds. Though some of this was over my head, I did feel as if I was participating in Dr. Eberhart's journey of discovery and learning a lot about materials on the way.

After reading the book, I felt as if I knew the Author and would enjoy having dinner with him.

Like all books, this one has its strengths and weaknesses.

WEAKNESSES:

1. Poor organizational structure.
There is really very little discernible organization to the way the material is presented, a distinct disadvantage in a book which is trying to present some fairly complex ideas. In particular, the interweaving of anecdotes from the author's personal life is more of a distraction than a help. Other reviewers seem not to have been bothered by this, but to me the effect - more often than not - was to interrupt the flow of whatever argument the author was trying to make.

2. Paragraphs like this one - (Eberhard explains how he likes to play games when people ask him what he does for a living):

"When I want to have fun, however, I say, `My research is concerned with the study of why things break.' Usually a look of satisfaction appears in the questioner's eyes as he says, `Oh, so you are a mechanical engineer (metallurgist, ceramist, or materials scientist).'
Now the fun begins as I say, `No, I study why things break, not when.'
The questioner is now doubtful. I sometimes break down at this point and explain my research in detail, but I have been known to milk the when/why distinction until my questioner is just fed up and moves on. ...
It is a common misunderstanding, confusing when with why. What people really understand is *when* things break. Fracture, as with almost every other phenomenon, is composed of two parts, cause and effect. The question of *when* deals with the cause, while that of *why* deals with the effect."

I find that paragraph, which is in no way atypical, problematic for a number of reasons. His gameplaying in response to a simple, polite question seems a bit juvenile. There's a certain smug superiority in the way he introduces the critical 'when/why' distinction. Which one might be more willing to overlook if he did even a halfway competent job of clarifying the distinction. But he doesn't. Those last two sentences make no sense whatever, at least not in a world where we continue to assign the normal English meaning to the word "why". Since his efforts elsewhere in the book to elucidate the 'when/why' distinction, which he obviously considers critical, are equally unhelpful, the reader is left frustrated. It's as if you've been condescended to by a professor who mocks your ignorance and then does nothing constructive to remedy it.

3. No diagrams, no figures, no graphs.

I understand why an author would choose to avoid equations and formulae in a book intended for a nonspecialist readership. But failure to include even a single figure or graph is a mystifying - and unfortunate - choice. There were at least a dozen places in the book where a simple graph would have spared the reader several paragraphs of poorly written, tortuous prose and made the point far more effectively.

4. Lack of clarity about the intended audience.

A key characteristic of good scientific writing is the author's ability to place himself in the shoes of the target reader (thus finding the appropriate level of technical detail). A major difficulty with this book is an apparent lack of clarity about the target audience. Who is this book intended to reach? It's unlikely to be interesting to people already familiar with the material. But it's also not going to be helpful to people unfamiliar with the author's field, as he displays a repeated inability to put himself in the general reader's shoes, resulting in "explanations" which don't really clarify things at all. Ultimately, this is the flaw which causes the book to fail completely, in my opinion. Eberhard is like your nightmare professor from college - the guy who launches into a convoluted, poorly thought-out, stream-of-consciousness explanation, not noticing that he has lost his audience at the third sentence.

5. A distinctly unengaging persona

Other reviewers found Eberhard's interweaving of anecdotes from his personal life endearing - I didn't. There is occasional relevance to the point being made, but far too often he allows an unattractive whining quality to creep in, for example in his repeated complaints that his chosen field of research receives too little attention, appreciation, or federal funding.

STRENGTHS:

Reading a book that is as poorly written, rambling, and dismally unclear as this one helps remind us not to take talented science writers like Richard Dawkins, Matt Ridley, Stephen Pinker, Malcolm Gladwell, Gina Kolata, and Natalie Angier for granted. To be seated next to any of these talented folks on a plane would be a fascinating experience. To be stuck next to the author of this book might well be your worst nightmare.

This book is the author's personal story of how he uncovered a (conceptually) simple explanation for the fracturing and shearing of materials, and metals in particular. As Eberhart puts it:

"When these angles [characteristic of the charge density around atoms in a material] vanished, the bonds resisting shear would break. So it also seemed reasonable that the smaller this angle, the more closely the charge density of the native metal resembled that of the deforming substance...[similarly] the competition between ductile and brittle behavior would boil down to comparing different angles. A ductile material would be one in which the angle that changed during shear was small compared to the changing angle during elongation." [Page 236]

Eberhart tells his story of discovery through the experience of his life, beginning with experiments he conducted with toys when only 6 years old. Along the way he illustrates the importance of material design by dissecting the cause of failure in some notorious historical examples, such as:
1) Aloha flight 243
2) The Titanic
3) Space shuttle Challenger

Aloha flight 243 was doomed by metal fatigue and crack propagation. The Titanic was doomed by, among other things, a captain who was sailing too fast in iceberg-infested waters, and because the steel used in Titanic had too much sulfur, causing the steel to be brittle in the cold Atlantic. Challenger was doomed by managers who overrode the technical advice of engineers who advised against launch, and by rubber O-rings that hadn't enough plasticity at the cold temperatures present at launch.

Eberhart does a nice job of placing material properties in a very broad historical context. He begins tens of thousands of years ago, describing how early hunters made stone tools by fracturing rocks. The story progresses through the development of metals, including bronze, iron, and steel. Along the way he gives interesting insight into how the characteristics of metals can be changed - sometimes dramatically - by the introduction of other atoms, and by how the material is worked.

Hardened steel, for example, is created by adding small amounts of carbon to iron (a soft metal in its pure state). Similarly, copper (also soft) is turned into bronze (harder) by alloying it with tin.

But why should the addition of atoms like carbon and tin make metals like iron and copper harder? Eberhart explains that the characteristics of materials (hardness, toughness, etc) result from the nature of the chemical bonds between atoms and the crystalline structure of the material. Metals are crystal conglomerates, with the various crystal grains oriented at different angles. Bending happens when planes of atoms slide past each other. When this happens dislocations in the crystals migrate. But these migrating dislocations are blocked at crystal boundaries because the planes of atoms are not aligned. Instead, the dislocations pile up at the boundaries, and when this happens the metal is no longer pliable (it's hard), and with increased force it doesn't bend, it breaks.

Material properties can be modified by treating in a way that limits the movement of dislocations. For example, cold-hammering bronze causes dislocations to pile up at grain boundaries, where they can no longer move easily. Steel consists of two types of crystals, Iron and carbide. Dislocations that can move easily in steel are blocked by carbide, so they pile up at the iron/carbide grain boundaries, making steel harder.

It's not always desirable to have hard materials; sometimes we want materials to bend without breaking. Here, too, dislocations play a part. Eberhart explains:

"When such a flaw [crack] is subjected to a load, sliding forces act on the atomic planes inclined to the crack, while tensile forces act on the parallel planes. To avoid fracture, dislocations must be able to move along the planes inclined to the crack. On the other hand, if dislocation motion is blocked, the planes parallel to the crack will come apart and the crack will run." [page 52]

The final chapter is an appeal to the government to do a better job of managing technology and science. Eberhart tells a particularly interesting story of how he went to Washington and tried to look up the Presidential Science Advisor. He looked and looked, but the Presidential Science Advisor wasn't in the phone book (this was in the early 1990s). Eberhart finds this symptomatic, especially since the grounds keeper of the White House was easily found.

I really enjoyed this book. It's interesting, informative, and easy to read. I managed to read it in less than a week, mostly while working out on my elliptical trainer. My only complaint is that the book has no figures. Having a few well-place figures would have been really welcome, particularly when reading the last few chapters dealing with the angles in chemical bonds.

When I first browsed through this book, I hesitated buying it because, despite the fact that it's a science book, it contains no figures, no tables and no diagrams whatsoever. But since I had heard good comments about it, I bought it anyway. I'm very glad that I did! I learned a lot from it. The lack of figures is compensated for by the author's excellent ability to clearly describe what a figure would have illustrated. The analogies used are well selected and are most helpful; the reader gets a good idea of how materials behave under various conditions at the atomic/molecular level. On the negative side, however, there are a couple of problems. On page 130, it is pointed out that a moon loses angular velocity over time due to its collisions with particles in space such that a collision between the moon and the surface of the planet that it's orbiting will ultimately result. This is misleading because our moon is actually receding from the earth. The reason for this is well described in the book "The Big Splat" (by D. Mackenzie). Another problem is that on page 131, it is stated that the Newton (N) is a unit of momentum. This is incorrect. The Newton is a unit of force in the MKS system. Since momentum is mass multiplied by velocity, its units in the MKS system are kg-m/s. Since the Newton is a unit of force, its subunits are kg-m/s2. Thus momentum can be expressed in kg-m/s or in N-s. Anyway, despite these minor shortcomings, the book is excellent and, I believe, well worth the five stars that I have given it. I heartily recommend it.

Not since "Surely Your Joking Mr. Feynman" have I so enjoyed a book. Part science, part politics, part history, part biography and autobiography, Eberhart takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through the world of technology and the development of a new scientific discipline. Your ride begins two million years ago when our ancestors broke the first rock to make stone tools and ends sometime in the future when we can design materials that will break the way we want them to.

An amazingly fun book.

This book has several interesting bits, such as the development of Corelle or why the Titanic sank. However, I was not very interested in the author's description of his career path or the listing of all the people he's worked with. Also I couldn't understand a lot of the physics he was trying to describe especially in the last few chapters. There's this extended analogy about mountain ranges and I still don't really know what he was talking about. I think if I'd skipped the last three chapters I'd have given it four stars.

Is it worth reading? Maybe. I waffle between 2 and 3 stars.

I didn't buy it from Amazon, I picked it up at the library - it caught my eye - because, of course I want to know why things break, why bridges fall down - what can I do to keep things from breaking.

Eberhart never gets there. It's a rambling treatise on his education on fracture - which is considerable. Along the way are some interesting stories - with some Nobel Prize Winner name dropping and envy thrown in.

He ends the book by telling about his "breakthrough" research about molecular bonding and charge densities that reminded me slightly of a graduate level engineering chemistry class. Seems like he tells you, at a molecular level, what the qualities of a material that doesn't break are. But then it stops.

He tells you about a company that a co researcher has formed to commercialize the ideas - are you supposed to call them for advice on which things will break and which won't? What about that question, what can I do? - back to 2 stars.

I like to read books that stretch my mind, that take it to a rougher terrain than what I am accustomed to. I figured a science book about why things break written for a general audience would suit the bill. I struggled with whether to give the book four stars or three, the former to acknowledge my own deficiency in the subject - perhaps it was me - but I settled for the latter. Why? Because to my mind, a science book written for mass consumption should challenge the reader but be generally accesible. This book did not accomplish that. The analogies given to explain scientific phenomena were hard to follow. I think the book would have benefited a great deal from illustrations to assist the reader in visualizing the explanations. On the other hand, there were sections with fascinating explanations of such things as why the Titanic sank, why the Challenger exploded, why it feels colder in Boston at 30 degrees than in Colorado at 15, and why Coloradoans don't really bother to shovel snow. In sum, though, the book is undecided about whether it's meant for the avearge reader or for a more scientific audience, and this falls short of the presumed goal.