Stuff Matters

Mark Miodownik’s 2013 book Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World follows the author on a journey of discovery as he studies ordinary objects to uncover fascinating secrets about the materials that hold our physical world together. From glass to elastic and from concrete to paper, Miodownik takes an up-close look at everyday things we hardly notice, revealing the engineering marvels that permeate our lives. An enthralling meditation on why materials look and behave the way they do, Stuff Matters will allow us to see our stuff in an entirely new way.

Miodownik begins by informing the reader that the materials we encounter every day have inner lives. Though they are seen as solid, they actually have fluid interiors. Metals, for example, are composed of crystals, which allow them to be bent. The author explains that his own quest to learn about materials came from an incident during which a stranger slashed through five layers of his clothing with a razor blade that was not much larger than a postage stamp, resulting in a massive scar down his back. This event instigated a curiosity in Miodownik, who has spent the majority of his life obsessed with understanding the materials that surround us.

Using history, chemistry, psychology, and storytelling, the author weaves an intricate tale about simple objects. He includes a photograph of himself sitting at a table in his roof garden in London in front of a glass building, with a ceramic teacup, Converse sneakers, and a book. He then delves into the architecture and history of each material, discussing the historical reasons it was created, its chemical structure, the technology that is required to create it, why it matters, and what it says about us.



He draws on “psychophysics,” which is the study of the way humans react sensually to materials. Psychophysics seeks to understand why, for example, we have chosen steel for kitchen sinks but not toilets and why we romanticize wooden floors and cast-iron railway stations but not ordinary glass windows. Miodownik’s central argument is that human civilization is largely a result of our vast wealth of material, and without it, we would face the same struggle to survive that wild animals face on a daily basis—the same struggle our ancestors faced.

Going into the science of materials, Miodownik explains that it is a matter of structural hierarchies that stretch from atoms to nano, micro, and miniature structures before reaching the level of things we can handle and see. The author explores various materials in turn, including steel, paper, glass, porcelain, concrete, plastics, and carbon fiber composites. Different ages have been named for the materials that dominate them—Stone, Bronze, Iron—and today’s age, the Silicon Age, is represented by graphene, aerogels, and bionic body replacements. Frequently used by NASA, silica aerogel is 99.8 percent air and is the world’s best insulator. A flower, for instance, that is placed on an aerogel block will be unaffected by a Bunsen burner beneath it. Graphene aerogel is also the world’s lightest solid.

Paper, says Miodownik, is light and flexible, yet durable. Its invention allowed us to transition from an oral culture, in which knowledge was passed down to descendants in the form of stories, songs, and apprenticeships, to a literate culture. While it is now ubiquitous, it has been considered rare and expensive over the course of its long history. The Chinese invented paper, and afterward, the Romans took paper and created a world of libraries, universities, and publications.



Another Roman invention, concrete is almost as enduring as books. The Roman Empire used concrete to construct some of its longest-lasting structures, like the dome of the Pantheon, which has stood for more than 2,000 years and remains the world’s oldest unreinforced concrete structure. However, despite its sturdiness, concrete’s fragility was a problem the Romans were unable to solve. Thus, they only used it in structures in which it would be compressed, such as pillars and domes, instead of stretched, like with floors and bridges. It was not until more than 1,000 years later that reinforced concrete was invented when a Parisian gardener sought strong, large, and affordable pots for his exotic glasshouse plants. This innovation facilitated the creation of roads, bridges, and skyscrapers.

According to Miodownik, perhaps the most amazing modernization is self-healing concrete, which resulted from the incidental observation that a certain alkaliphilic bacterial species excretes calcite, a mineral that is a constituent of concrete. These bacteria survive enclosed in rock for several decades, making them adapted for integration into concrete. Another inventive form of concrete is filtercrete, which is made up of highly porous concrete that allows bacteria to colonize it and runoff to permeate it. Filtercrete reduces the need for drains while exposing homes to bacteria that purify water by detoxifying contaminants and oils.

When he turns to plastics, Miodownik celebrates celluloid, which he said has had the largest cultural impact. Without it, film would have been impossible. The author also takes a moment to talk about craft inventions that were created before the scientific age. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the Samurai were the only people to possess the secret of how to create sharp, hard steel. The essential component, the carbon content, was unknown to all but the Japanese, who found an empirical method of selecting the sharpest specimens of steel. Likewise, until 1704, only the Chinese knew the secret of creating porcelain, which achieves its incredible toughness and translucency through a combination of feldspar, white clay, and quartz that is heated to 1,200C.



Miodownik concludes that materials are so much more than “blobs of differently colored matter”—they are marvels, and looking at them a little closer allows us to gain insight into the reasons they look and act the way they do. The author’s thoughtful and careful study of materials means we will never look at our everyday stuff the same way again.