Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World

Stuff Matters gives the reader a glimpse into the engineering and properties of many of the critical materials that we encounter in day to day life. Mark Miodownik is professors of material and society at UCL and introduces the reader gently to his expertise leaving them with a newfound appreciation for physics, engineering and chemistry. The book is highly readable and engaging and gives an excellent introduction to a subject we should all know about.Stuff Matters picks several materials that are all contained in the surroundings of the author while he drinks coffee on his roof. He starts by discussing steel and the properties of metal. He discusses how we moved from the bronze age to the iron age and what was required to jump to the steel age. The author discusses the atomic structure of metals and how simple metallurgy can fundamentally change the strength of metals due to the crystal structures. The author moves on to paper and where it comes from (plants) and how it is both made and its properties. He discusses different forms of paper including glossy, newspaper, receipt paper and money as well. The author then moves on to concrete and how it enables modern construction. Concrete has been with us from Roman times but was forgotten for millennia and was rediscovered only recently. The physics of the material are described and the properties of reinforced steel are detailed. The author moves on to a totally different kind of item, chocolate. He discusses the history and the properties and the reader is left with a newfound appreciation for chocolate making. The next subject tackled is foam. This topic takes the reader on a slightly less immediately observable material but is a fascinating tale. The reader is introduced to a material called aerogel which sounds remarkable. The author then moves in to plastic and discusses it through the story of the inventor of plastic, it is really interesting and plastic was first being focused on commercially to fill the supply demand imbalance for billiard balls. The author then discusses glass. We are shown how it is made and where it comes from. We are introduced to both modern and ancient glassmaking and the material properties of glass. The author also talks about carbon and discusses how graphite and diamond are the same material. He discusses the crystal and molecular structure of carbon atoms and how they can form together in different structures. The author discusses pottery and introduces the reader to both clay and basic pottery but extends the discussion to modern porcelain and ceramics. The author ends the topics with a story of how he broke his leg and some aspects of materials in modern medicine. He discusses plaster and how it is a simple yet incredibly important material that has changed the nature of life and death injuries for math. He also discusses teeth and organs in reference to the 6 million dollar man to discuss what we can rebuild using todays technology.Stuff Matters introduces the reader to the basic properties of many of our most important materials used in day to day life. It does so engagingly and by the end the reader will feel like they understand a little bit more about the materials we use. Definitely recommend the book and the audience is very wide.

The book is outlined in a way that makes sense; it starts by showing you a picture of Mark (the author) on what looks to be a terrace and then has a drawn-in arrow to the object that he will go over for the next 10-20 pages. The whole book follows this pattern, but it is actually fascinating. He explains the arrangement of the molecules and atoms in each of the objects and how we use them in our everyday life, how this overlooked stuff is essential in the lifestyle that we live. Some of the information that he gave was really interesting. It was really cool when he gave examples of how they relate to the arrangement of the atoms or molecules, like a blacksmith hammering a new sword or a piece of paper and how it keeps the ink because the reaction takes place. Still, he would swiftly continue onto the next topic without further knowledge of that item, making the book more of a trivia info book. Still, nevertheless, the book was exciting the whole time. It had been established from the beginning of the book and continued to circle back to the importance of understanding how majorly we take things for granted. The book ends with Mark shortly giving his opinion on how these things really shape the world and how people use them. Overall, this was a great book and led me to be thankful for the complex simplicity of the everyday stuff that I use.

Most of us at times feel thoroughly modern and enlightened, and perhaps even a little haughty when we consider the primitive world that existed in ancient times. You know,say, 50 years ago. But if asked to explain even some of the simplest "low tech" items and objects around us, concrete, paper, plastic, etc., our response is often shrugs and far off stares. Mark Miodownik, is a young-ish materials engineer with a PhD, who is not just brilliantly knowledgable of the makeup and history of "Stuff", but is equally a gifted, entertaining and creative writer and instructor who clearly loves his subject with a passion. He's like that one teacher we all had somewhere between grade school and until we "finished", that talks and teaches with enthusiasm, gestures and such complete animation, that you can't help to both smile and be riveted to every word. Who knew that such basic and seemingly boring things like plastic that are both ubiquitous and often derided as cheap, had such an interesting story to tell even as they make our everyday lives, as we know them, even possible. How, for example, did billiard balls usher in the invention of the first plastic? Billiards went from an elitist past time, to a populist activity. Bar owners, especially, saw the game as an opportunity to have patrons stay longer and, well, keep drinking. But billiard balls were made from ivory, and with the explosion in popularity, ivory was becoming almost prohibitively expensive. John Westley Hyatt and his brother set up a lab in their shed, motivated by an advertisement in the New York Times that offered $10,000, a gigantic sum at the time, to anyone who could invent a new material for billiard balls. The money was offered by a syndicate of investors led by a retired Civil War general. Hyatt's experimental billiard balls had the annoying habit of exploding when they collided, with everyone in the bar drawing their guns, with what sounded like gun fire. So begins his saga of plastics. To say I have an entirely new perspective and respect for the 10 items of "Stuff" Mr. Miodownik details is a wild understatement. It's a light, quick read, due to the talent of his combination of little boy fascination and enthusiasm and sometimes stand-up comic, sometimes poetic word weaver. It's rare, at least for me, to ever desire to revisit a movie or book with so many other things competing for the precious open time slots. But I'm actually anxious to re-read Stuff Matters again from the beginning to try to fix the huge volume of interesting and entertaining information in my mind both for sharing with like minds and to keep my appreciation for the not so mundane Stuff, fresh. An enthusiastic exploding 5 stars!