|
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.
Ivan Amato is a science writer whose
articles have been published in many magazines and newspapers,
including the Washington Post, San Francisco
Examiner, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun,
Omni, Science News, Science, New
Scientist, and Wired. He lives in Silver Springs,
Maryland, with his wife and two sons.
|
