Mark Miodownik’s is a materials scientist, broadcaster and author. His book “Stuff Matters: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World” recently won the most prestigious science book award in the world — the 2014 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science Books.
I went to interview Miodownik about his famous book at his office at the University College London, where he works as the Professor for Materials and Society and is also Director of the UCL Institute of Making. I was curious to learn why he choose to write on an area of science not many people know about.“I feel like people are less exposed to making stuff,” he tells me. “And they are surrounded by really amazing things. Everything is made of something and yet, because there was so much amazing stuff, in a sense people just give up and just don’t learn and engage about any of it. They are missing out on something wonderful. I feel it is a bit like, imagine if you only ever ate biscuits and water, you know? You’d be missing out on a whole huge culinary world and that is what it is like with materials.”
Bizarrely it was being stabbed in the back by a razor blade on a train platform as a schoolboy which first ignited Miodownik’s interest in the material world. “It did strike me as odd that you can have something so dangerous that people scrape across their chin everyday, that is what we do right? Men shave. They shave their hair off with these incredibly sharp [blades.]”
It didn’t always use to be the case. “You had to have enormous skill in the old days to shave and that was what the barbers were about. And lots of people had beards. And the reason you look around today and people are clean shaven is steel. So a material literally changed the face of the world.” Miodownik laughs. “And it tells you that materials are not just technological marvels, they change how we behave. They change the culture, they change society.”
Among different objects on display in Miodownik’s office I spot models of atoms inside a crystal and a can of soup. “That can of soup is also significant because it is a Campbell’s soup can” he says. “I don’t know if you know, but in the modernist time tomato soup was an icon of Andy Warhol’s art. And of course artists rely on material knowledge to express themselves. Without that there is no art.”
Probably the strangest object I find in the office of the eminent professor — who was listed by “The Times” newspaper as one of the 100 most influential scientists in the UK — is a “lota” (a round-shaped vessel used as a traditional alternative to toilet paper in parts of South Asia). Miodownik I discover is oblivious to what a “lota” is and uses it to water his plants, having bought it from a shop in East London. Other objects are more closer to Miodownik’s area of expertise. “Look at this,” he says, handing me a dark porous object to get a closer look. “These are the kind of samples that people send me of new materials. This is a foam, but it is made of metal. So it is something like a bath sponge, but instead of being made out of a polymer it is made out of metal.”
It took about two years for Miodownik to write the book. Writing a popular science book versus publishing just another academic tome is not for everyone. “The world is full of things to do right?” Miodownik says. “So why would they read your book? And there are millions of books to read as well. There is also TV and cinema and music and art and food — why would they spend time with your book? I suppose for me that was always the thing that was foremost in my mind is that just because I love it, doesn’t mean that they will love it.”
One way in which Miodownik succeeds in making his book a captivating read is by using personal anecdotes and stories which bring the materials to life. Each chapter is dedicated to one material and has a character of its own to encapsulate something about the material.
One of the materials covered is concrete. Miodownik narrates in the book how he used to go to observe the Shard when it was being constructed. The building holds the distinction of being the tallest in Western Europe and is an important feature of the London skyline. He says the way they make a modern concrete tower is really quite incredible. “And yet here it is happening inside every city and most people just walk past as if it is kind of completely obvious. And if you were to stop people on the street and ask them ‘How are people doing that?’ How are they building a tower like 24 hours a day pumping concrete, moving a mould up, like they are growing a building? In which the bit that just solidified now becomes the next structure to keep the whole thing going.
“And also how long can you go on — like how far could we go? This thing is self-sustaining. Like a tree. Like how high could it be? So all those sorts of questions. You don’t realise you have those questions until you start thinking about if you were to try and make this thing yourself what would you do? And how would you do it?”
One really intriguing material which Miodownik introduces in the book is called silica aerogel. This transparent and futuristic looking object is the lightest solid in the world. Its inventor, an American farmer-turned-chemist called Samuel Kistler, was fascinated by jelly. Kistler had the idea of replacing the liquid in a jelly with gas while keeping the skeleton intact. Miodownik explains that a jelly is somewhere between a solid and a liquid. “It is mostly liquid, but it is a liquid bound up in an internal skeleton,” he says “And it can’t escape. That is why it wobbles because it is mostly liquid. And if you let the water escape, the whole thing collapses. This guy Kistler was interested in working out how to get rid of the water and leave the solid behind, this fragile skeleton.”
At this present moment in time silica aerogel does not have that many uses. But its potential shouldn’t be underestimated perhaps. Take the story of another more familiar material. For centuries after the collapse of the Roman empire the Chinese were ahead of the West in terms of technology. “Yet they didn’t have a kind of scientific revolution in the same way that we did, you know, even though we were in the less technologically sophisticated West. And the question is why?”
While it is obviously a complex topic to analyse, one of the key materials which was absent in China was glass. “With glass, if you master it, you can make a lens. If you can make a lens you can make a telescope. And then you can see the stars, the planets, and you can start to predict things like the calendar — like when things are going to happen.”
Another instrument which uses glass is a microscope. “Can you imagine how you would discover biology if you didn’t have a microscope? And again it is the lens. So it seems very clear that you can’t really understand how the world works, both in the big scale and the small scale, if you don’t have glass. And for whatever reason, maybe it was a cultural or aesthetic reason, they just didn’t pursue glass material.”
In fact as Miodownik mentions in his book the word “window” comes from “wind eye.” For a large part of history he says windows did not have glass in them. The Chinese and Japanese used paper instead. “They had paper. And paper I mean is not a bad material if it is not raining. And there isn’t strong winds. And also it is opaque, it is not really transparent. So you can’t have a view through a paper window.”
In the chapter on glass Miodownik bemoans that “people do not tend to wax lyrical about glass” as they would some other materials. Is that something that troubles him — why some materials become more popular then others? “Yeah I mean it is interesting isn’t it that people love gold. They love it so much. You can have a whole room full of gold and you feel rich right? If you don’t have glass you are cold, you are wind blown, you are insecure. So which one would you rather have? So we are rich in a different way with glass then we are with gold.”
Of all the materials covered in “Stuff Matters” — such as steel, graphite and plastic — the one which stands out is chocolate. Miodownik is a aficionado who eats chocolate regularly. I wonder if it was included because of his personal fondness for chocolate. “No. For me there isn’t a hierarchy of amazing materials in that sense. I think they are all amazing. And chocolate is as amazing as steel in some ways. It really is very sophisticated in some ways. People spend a lot of time honing its internal structure. And it is made of crystals, so you know you are eating crystals. And they have some remarkable properties. Yeah it deserves its place in the book. That is a material people love without any question.”
As a material scientist does he have an explanation for why chocolate tastes so good? “Most sweet things are designed in different ways so that they dissolve. They are kind of made of sugar, but chocolate isn’t. Chocolate is a fat essentially. And it has a melting point that is just below the temperature of your mouth. So it is solid until it gets into your mouth and it melts. Turns out that extracts heat from your tongue, so it gives you a cooling effect.”
For Miodownik winning the Royal Society Winton Prize 2014 in November was also a victory for the discipline of material science. “It validates me, but mostly it validates the subject,” he says. “Because you are up against physics, chemistry, biology, economics — and materials science won.”
Impressively, the judges unanimously voted to give Miodownik the prize and also included a reward of £25,000 (Dh134,545).
That a stabbing incident all those years back motivated Miodownik to set off on a journey of exploration into the material sciences is certainly an inspiring story. He believes there is a greater complexity in the physical world then a person’s brain can cope with. “You have to kind of work out which bits of it you are going to ignore to remain sane or even functional just to get on with your life. And most people choose to ignore the materials bit. And they pay attention to other things. And I just didn’t.”
Syed Hamad Ali is a writer based in London.
