by Mark Miodownik
In ninth grade, First Son read Uncle Tungsten as supplemental chemistry reading. I liked having an additional book to read alongside his Sabbath Mood Homeschool chemistry work and Uncle Tungsten was an inspiring book (my post about it). The Sabbath Mood plans suggest finding a biography of a chemist to read, but I have struggled to find one I like; they tend to be too long or too short or too anti-religion. Stuff Matters showed up when I was browsing chemistry books online.
In Stuff Matters, the author blends history, chemistry, physics, and the experiences of his own senses to share how common materials developed and shape our modern world. These materials include steel, paper, concrete, dark chocolate, foam, plastic, glass, graphite, porcelain, and implants.
A wide variety of chemical and physical properties are encountered with a handful of useful sketches of molecular structures to aid understanding the relationship between structure and material properties. When discussing the transparency of glass, he explains the structure of atoms and the amount of empty space within it.
This suggests that there should be plenty of room for light to travel through an atom without bumping into either an electron or the nucleus. Which indeed there is. So the real question is not "Why is glass transparent?," but "Why aren't all materials transparent?"While many of the materials featured are common ones, the conversation the author presents around them introduces a wide variety of topics. Readers will learn about a material harder than diamond (lonsdaleite) and a material that is two-dimensional (graphene). Miodownik also shares the story of Bottger, who served his prison time systematically experimenting to discover the method to make porcelain for the king of Saxony. The descriptions of this process fascinate and delight.
Then, as the temperature increased further still to 1300 [degrees] C and the whole kiln became white hot, the magic would have started to happen: some of the atoms flowing between their crystals would have turned into a river of glass. Now they were mostly solid, but also part liquid. It would have been as if the cups had blood running through their veins in the form of liquid glass. This liquid would have flowed into all the small pores between the crystals and coated all the surfaces. Now, unlike almost all other types of ceramic, the cups would have felt what it was like to be free of defects.In the last chapter of the book, the author provides a kind of overview of materials science, bringing together the concepts from each of the earlier chapters.
This book is a probably choice for First Son to read as a supplemental chemistry book in tenth grade. It provides a glimpse into both the materials of the modern world and the scientific research and struggles of their development. (The new book, Liquid Rules, is already on my list to consider for eleventh grade.)
I have received nothing in exchange for this post. All opinions are my own. I checked this book out from our library. Links to Amazon are affiliate links.
