Author

Publication

1997 - Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J, New Jersey

Language

English

Word Count

114,500 words, Guess

Page Count

458 pages

Identifiers

  • Open LibraryOL658808M
  • ISBN-100691027331
  • OCLC Control Number36201140
  • Library of Congress Control Number97004027
  • Goodreads4389824
and 1 more
  • LibraryThing256141

Classifications

  • DDC620.1/1
  • LCCTA403 .B2247 1997

Description

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.

Subjects

Topics

MaterialsTechnological innovationsMaterials -- Technological innovations.

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