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Made to Measure: New Materials for the 21st Century ISBN: 0691009759 ISBN13: 9780691009759 Made to Measure: New Materials for the 21st Century By: Philip Ball Publisher: Princeton University Press Format: Paperback Our Price: 13.39 Discount: 21% RRP: 16.95

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:

 Acknowledgments Ch

1 Light Talk: Photonic Materials Ch

2 Total Recall: Materials for Information Storage Ch

3 Clever Stuff: Smart Materials Ch

4 Only Natural: Biomaterials Ch

5 Spare Parts: Biomedical Materials Ch

6 Full Power: Materials for Clean Energy Ch

7 Tunnel Vision: Porous Materials Ch

8 Hard Work: Diamond and Hard Materials Ch

9 Chain Reactions: The New Polymers Ch

10 Face Value: Surfaces and Interfaces Bibliography Figure Credits Index


Brief Description:

Introduces an area of scientific research: materials science. This book describes how scientists are inventing 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.

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