Made to measure : new materials for the 21st century / Philip Ball.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ball, Philip, 1962- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Materials--Technological innovations.

Materials.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (480 pages)

Place of Publication:

Princeton, New Jersey : Princeton University Press, [1997]

Summary:

Made to Measure introduces a general audience to one of today's most exciting areas of scientific research: materials science. Philip Ball describes how scientists are currently inventing thousands of new materials, ranging from synthetic skin, blood, and bone to substances that repair themselves and adapt to their environment, that swell and flex like muscles, that repel any ink or paint, and that capture and store the energy of the Sun. He shows how all this is being accomplished precisely because, for the first time in history, materials are being "made to measure": designed for particular applications, rather than discovered in nature or by haphazard experimentation. Now scientists literally put new materials together on the drawing board in the same way that a blueprint is specified for a house or an electronic circuit. But the designers are working not with skylights and alcoves, not with transistors and capacitors, but with molecules and atoms. This book is written in the same engaging manner as Ball's popular book on chemistry, Designing the Molecular World, and it links insights from chemistry, biology, and physics with those from engineering as it outlines the various areas in which new materials will transform our lives in the twenty-first century. The chapters provide vignettes from a broad range of selected areas of materials science and can be read as separate essays. The subjects include photonic materials, materials for information storage, smart materials, biomaterials, biomedical materials, materials for clean energy, porous materials, diamond and hard materials, new polymers, and surfaces and interfaces.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION The Art of Making

CHAPTER ONE Light Talk: Photonic Materials

CHAPTER TWO Total Recall: Materials for Information Storage

CHAPTER THREE Clever Stuff: Smart Materials

CHAPTER FOUR Only Natural: Biomaterials

CHAPTER FIVE Spare Parts: Biomedical Materials

CHAPTER SIX Full Power: Materials for Clean Energy

CHAPTER SEVEN Tunnel Vision: Porous Materials

CHAPTER EIGHT Hard Work: Diamond and Hard Materials

CHAPTER NINE Chain Reactions: The New Polymers

CHAPTER TEN Face Value: Surfaces and Interfaces

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FIGURE CREDITS

INDEX

Plates

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages [429]-444) and index.

ISBN:

9781400865338

1400865336

OCLC:

1264471484