Handmade

A Scientist's Search for Meaning through Making

Handmade
Anna Ploszajski
RRP:
NZ$ 56.99
Our Price:
NZ$ 45.59
Hardback
h216 x 135mm - 320pg
13 May 2021 UK
International import eta 10-19 days
9781472971074
Out Of Stock
Currently no stock in-store, stock is sourced to your order
From atomic structures to theories about magnetic forces, scientific progress has given us a good grasp on the properties of many different materials. However, most scientists cannot measure the temperature of steel just by looking at it, or sculpt stone into all kinds of shapes, or know how it feels to blow up a balloon of glass. Handmade is the story of materials through making and doing. Author and material scientist Anna Ploszajski journeys into the domain of makers and craftspeople to comprehend how the most popular materials really work. With knowledge accumulated over generations through hands-on trial and error, these experimenters and tinkerers understand the materiality of objects far better than any scientist with a textbook. Anna has the fresh perspective of someone at the forefront of the field. Each chapter centres around an everyday material and features Anna' s accounts of learning from masters of their respective crafts. Along the way, she builds a fuller picture of materials and their place in society, as well as how they have intersected with her own life experiences - from land racing on American salt flats to swimming the English Channel. She visits a female blacksmith artist to see, hear, smell and strike steel herself, explores how working with one of the most primal of materials, clay, has brought about some of the most advanced technologies, and delves down to the atomic scale of glass to find out what makes it ' glassy' . Handmadeaffords us a new understanding of the materials we encounter every day and an appreciation for the skills needed to fashion them into objects that are perfectly formed for the jobs they do.
By meeting with makers and playing with materials, Anna creates a beautiful picture of what these substances really feel like and what they are capable of. This book will make all your senses tingle. * Roma Agrawal, structural engineer and author * This book is a wonderful journey through the art and science of materials. . . beautifully crafted and very personal. Highly recommended to anyone who loves ' stuff' and is curious enough to want to delve into its inner secrets. * Mark Miodownik, scientist, broadcaster and founder of the Materials Library *
Dr Anna Ploszajski is an award-winning materials scientist, writer and storyteller. She' s a materials generalist, equally fascinated by metals, plastics, ceramics, glasses and substances from the natural world. A patent holder by the age of 22, Anna has packed a lot into a short space of time - her career has seen her work in labs at NASA in Florida, attempt to break a land-speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, and power Glastonbury Festival using hydrogen. Anna also works as a freelance science communicator and storyteller, regularly performing live science shows to audiences across the UK and internationally. As a stand-up comedian, Anna brings materials science to life at venues ranging from the local pub to the Edinburgh Fringe, and is on a mission to train scientists and engineers in storytelling skills. A frequent presenter on radio and TV, Anna is the host of her own podcast about materials and making (also called Handmade).
Status: No local stock, title imported to order
ISBN-13: 9781472971074
Published: 13 May 2021
Published In: United Kingdom
Imprint: Bloomsbury Sigma
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Format: Hardback
Height: 216mm
Width: 135mm
Pages: 320

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