Stuff Matters

Stuff Matters

The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials that Shape Our Man-made World

Summary

* * * 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
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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.
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'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

Reviews

  • Utterly captivating. Every piece of 'stuff' we take for granted in our daily lives has a rich story to tell. A real delight
    Jim Al-Khalili, author of Paradox

About the author

Mark Miodownik

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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