The Ancient Greek aphorism "know thyself" was adopted by many authors throughout the centuries. Yet, in our technological and fast times, we should maybe use also another maxim - "know your materials". This motto is actually already employed by many professionals working in numerous industries, but most ordinary people give for granted the objects that make the fabric of our world. This is definitely not the case with Mark Miodownik.
Professor of Materials and Society at University College London (UCL) and scientist-in-residence on Dara O Briain's Science Club on BBC2, Miodownik has turned the "know your material" motto into his personal mantra and into the main topic of a recently released volume, Stuff Matters: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World (Viking).
The titles of ten out of the eleven chapters included in the book are adjectives describing the properties of a specific material analysed in that chapter (the opening chapter, "Indomitable" is dedicated to steel; "Delicious" to chocolate; "Imaginative" to plastic and so on). Each material is approached from a scientific, but also historical and personal point of view.
Quite often Miodownik moves from his personal experiences to introduce his readers to intricate topics: while being slashed by a stranger in a London tube station with a razor blade as a teenager sparked his first interest in everyday materials, closely observing the Shard rising near his home allowed him to ponder on the complex structure of concrete; a sensual advert for a chocolate bar he watched on TV as a young boy prompted him to research in depth the power of cocoa, while a quarrel in a cinema about a plastic wrapper inspired him an inventive chapter about celluloid written in the form of a film script.
The most intriguing stories about certain materials come from ancient history: when the Roman legion left their headquarters at Inchtuthil, Scotland, they burnt their fort and buried in a hole thousands of iron and steel nails to avoid them falling into their enemies' hands but they took away with them the soldiers' razors made with high-quality steel that, the author explains, allowed them to remain clean-shaven and distinguish themselves from the savage hordes that had driven them out. The Romans employed the sulphur rock powder from Pozzuoli to make cement and build ports, bridges, aqueducts and the most impressive and unreinforced concrete dome in the world - the Pantheon in Rome. The introduction of glass into everyday life is also to be attributed to Romans who started making with it drinking vessels that allowed people to enjoy other qualities of their drinks, such as colour and transparency.
Miodownik chose the materials he tackles in the book according to his personal interests, but also referencing the world that surrounds us, and his unique perspective allowed him to create a useful library of materials for readers who may want to know not only their history, but also the chemical structure behind them and the reasons why in some cases certain materials were abandoned or not developed further.
The chapters tackling concrete, carbon and the almost invisible aerogels (that Miodownik very briefly glimpses for the first time in his life in an American laboratory) are the best ones in the book. What's missing is a wider angle on 3D printing (even though the last chapter looks at bionic implants and in particular at the application of 3D printing in medicine), an in-depth analyses of innovative materials (even though self-healing and self-cleaning concrete get a mention) and of disciplines like nanotechnology. Yet if we as readers aren't too sure about the history and applications of steel, glass, paper or porcelain, there is actually no point in moving onto more technologically advanced materials.
In the last chapter, Miodownik references the meanings of materials and how designers and architects use them to create clothes, products and buildings that we like or that we identify with, hinting in this way at the sociological power of materials (an issue the author mainly mentions in the chapter about porcelain). Materials, the author states towards the end of the book, are a reflection of who we are, but also an expression of our human needs (take note fashion design students: it's only by knowing your materials that you can develop functionally useful and commercially successful pieces).
Miodownik is currently Director of the UCL Institute of Making, so you can bet that, at some point in future, we will see a new book out (or a TV programme) about more supermaterials like aerogels. In the meantime Stuff Matters remains an excellent and quite infectious read for people obsessed with materials, but also for anybody else who wants to be more aware of the architecture of the world we live in and rediscover our personal relationship with it.
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