Synopses & Reviews
Why are some solids stronger than others? Why do ships break in half? Why does glass sometimes shatter and sometimes bend like a spring? This lively book explains for the layman how such questions are now being answered. During the last forty years material science has emerged as a field in which engineers and scientists look at the atoms and molecules on which the mechanical properties of materials depend.
Gordon describes how we will see our way to making radically better materials, and how they will open up completely new possibilities to engineers. In nonmathematical language he shows the stregnths of metals and wood and ceramics and glass and bone are interrelated and how and why these materials behave in various kinds of structures.
Review
"I was thoroughly charmed and won over by this book which I now recommend to all my colleagues." Daniel C. Mattis, American Journal of Physics
Review
"Princeton has brought to the public a highly readable treatise on the science of materials that emphasizes the strength of chemical and physical bonds, crystal structure, and cracks. . . . The author admits the necessity of being highly selective in the materials he can discuss so broadly, but he ably presents chemical and physical problems and how they have been solved in an orderly fashion, and he shows that the strength of materials is influenced as much by their environment and loading systems as by their own structures and shapes." S. W. Dobyns, Science Books and Films
Review
"I found Gordon's writing style fascinating; his book reads like a novel, and the technical content is superb." Enoch J. Durbin, Princeton University
Synopsis
The Description for this book, The New Science of Strong Materials or Why You Don't Fall Through the Floor, will be forthcoming.
Description
Bibliography: p. [280]-281.