Book description
Why isn't wood weaker that it is? Why isn't steel stronger? Why does
glass sometimes shatter and sometimes bend like spring? Why do ships
break in half? What is a liquid and is treacle one? All these are
questions about the nature of materials. All of them are vital to
engineers but also fascinating as scientific problems. During the 250
years up to the 1920s and 1930s they had been answered largely by seeing
how materials behaved in practice. But materials continued to do things
that they "ought" not to have done. Only in the last 40 years
have these questions begun to be answered by a new approach. Material
scientists 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 material science is a demonstration of the sometimes curious
and entertaining ways in which scientists isolate and solve problems.
James Edward Gordon was born in 1913. He took a degree in naval
architecture at Glasgow University and worked in wood and steel
shipyards, intending to design sailing ships. On the outbreak of the
Second World War he moved to the Royal Aircraft Establishment at
Farnborough, where he worked on wooden aircraft, plastics and
unorthodox materials of all kinds. He designed the sailing rescue
dinghies carried at one time by most bomber aircraft. He later became
head of the plastic structures sections at Farnborough and developed a
method of construction in reinforced plastics which is now used for a
number of purpose in aircraft and rockets.
For several frustrating years he worked in industry on the strength
of glass and the growth of strong 'whisker' crystals. In 1962 he
returned to government service as superintendent of an experimental
branch at Waltham Abbey concerned with research and development of
entirely new structural materials, most of which were based on
'whiskers'. He was Industrial Fellow Commoner at Churchill College,
Cambridge, and became Professor of Materials Technology at the
University of Reading, where he was later Professor Emeritus. He was
awarded the British Silver Medal of the Royal Aeronautical Society for
work on aircraft plastics and also the Griffith Medal of the Materials
Science Club for contributions to material science. His book,
Structures or Why Things Don't Fall Down, is also published in Penguin.
Professor Gordon died in 1998. In its obituary The Times wrote of
him that he was 'one of the founders of materials science' and that he
wrote 'two books of outstanding literary quality ... at once
entertaining and informative, providing absorbing interest for both
expert and student'.
