Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World

New York Times Notable Book 2014
Winner of the Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books

Miodownik, a materials scientist, explains the history and science behind things such as paper, glass, chocolate, and concrete with an infectious enthusiasm. Scientific American

Why is glass see-through? What makes elastic stretchy? Why does any material look and behave the way it does? These are the sorts of questions that renowned materials scientist Mark Miodownik constantly asks himself. Miodownik studies objects as ordinary as an envelope and as unexpected as concrete cloth, uncovering the fascinating secrets that hold together our physical world. In Stuff Matters, Miodownik explores the materials he encounters in a typical morning, from the steel in his razor to the foam in his sneakers. Full of enthralling tales of the miracles of engineering that permeate our lives, Stuff Matters will make you see stuff in a whole new way.

Stuff Matters is about hidden wonders, the astonishing properties of materials we think boring, banal, and unworthy of attention . . . It s possible this science and these stories have been told elsewhere, but like the best chocolatiers, Miodownik gets the blend right. New York Times Book Review

Mark Miodownik is a professor of materials and society at University College London. He is the director of the Institute of Making, which is home to a materials library containing some of the most wondrous matter on earth. He lives in London."