Made to Measure: New Materials for the 21st Century

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 480 pages
• Published by: Princeton University Press; New Ed edition September 13, 1999
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0691009759
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0691009759
• Book Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.2 inches
• Weighs: 1.5 pounds

From Library Journal
Ball's (Designing the Molecular World, LJ 5/15/94) far-reaching work takes the reader on a long, strange, sometimes tedious, often difficult trip through the arcane world of new materials?the stuff scientists and engineers have created, or are speculating about, for propelling the high-technology boom to new heights. Ball thoroughly explores the use of what he calls advanced materials in the fields of photonics (which, he argues, will entirely replace electronics one day), information storage, biomedicine, and energy, to name a few. Something he calls smart materials will eventually replace whole machines: "[Imagine] a smart valve [that] is no more than a tube through which the fluid passes; when the flow exceeds [some] critical value, the material of the tube expands until it pinches off the flow." There are lots of good photographs and schematics for aiding the sometimes dizzying exposition. Most appropriate for interested readers with a college-level background in chemistry and physics.?Robert C. Ballou, Atlanta
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Review
Colin Humphreys New Scientist : Let me state up front that Made to Measure is an outstanding book. Written for the general reader, it will also greatly appeal to specialists. If you are a solid-state physicist, chemist, materials scientist, engineer, science policy maker, or keen amateur scientist, then sell your shirt to buy it.


Jon Turney Financial Times : Philip Ball offers a panorama of 1,001 new materials for the next century. His survey would make a good textbook for an introductory course in materials science. For the rest of us, the sheer range of examples is impressive.


Robert W. Cahn European Journal of Physics : Philip Ball writes about the very modern science of materials. [He] is full of fascinating insights, and especially on the photonic side of things he really opens the reader's eyes. [His] book is the first to be entirely devoted to this field. That task has been very well accomplished, and the book is warmly recommended.


Reader Reviews
Just as the 20th century has been often described as the information age, it might also be described as the age of materials. At the beginning of the 20th century, our technology was based mostly on materials harvested and refined from nature. Milled lumber, iron, copper, and alloys of common metals. Fabrics were all derived from plans and animals with very little processing. Early in the past century a revoution started to develop in materials technology, as scientists and engineers began to experiment with creating molecules and structures not found in naturally occuring materials. At the molecular lever, chemists created long-chain polymers that had some of the characteristics of natural materials, but greatly improved resistence to wear and temperature. At the macroscopic level, materials were combined into composites like plywood and epoxy reinforced fiberglass. New structures unseen in nature, like matrixes of carbon and boron fibers embedded in metals, became possible. By the end of the century, it was possible to start moving around individual atoms to create entirely new materials with designer properties. Ball's narrative covers both the history of materials science, and the future and its possibilities. He's particularly good at the historical story, and at drawing parallels betwene natural and artifial structures. As in Ball's other popular works on science, "Made to Measure" is approachable without being trivial, and rigorous in its attention to detail without becoming numbingly pedantic. This is a book that would serve admiribly as either an introduction for the educated reader or a supplimentary text in an introductory materials engineer course. Comment | | (Report this)