The New Science of Strong Materials  (English, Paperback, Gordon J E)

Why isn't wood weaker than it is? Why isn't steel stronger? Why does glass sometimes shatter and sometimes bend like a spring? Why do ships break in half? What is a liquid...and is treacle one?

All of these are questions about the nature of material. All of them are vital to engineers but also intrinsically fascinating as scientific problems. During the two hundred and fifty years up to the 1920s and 1930s they had been answered largely by seeing how materials behaved in practise. But materials continued to do things that 'ought' not to have done. Only in the last forty years have these questions begun to be answered by a new approach.

Now materials scientists, of whom Professor Gordon is one, have started to look more deeply into the make-up of materials. They have found many surprises; above all, perhaps, that how a material behaves depends on how perfectly - or imperfectly - its atoms are arranged.

Using both SI and imperial units, Professor Gordon's account of this fast - developing science is a perfect demonstration of the sometimes curious and entertaining way in which scientists isolate and solve problems.