Skip to main content

Sticking Together - Steven Abbott ***

When I saw the subtitle of this book 'the science of adhesion' and the fact that it was published by the Royal Society of Chemistry I imagined turf wars breaking out with the Institute of Physics - as surely the science of adhesion is pure physics. However, it would be fair to say that in practice the majority of the book covers the science of adhesives, where chemistry can certainly lay a firm claim.

There is no doubt that this book will answer everything you ever wanted to know about how things stick to other things - from geckos to PVA adhesive - it is both comprehensive and often fascinating. Steven Abbott has a friendly style and supports the material in the book with regular links to YouTube videos where you can see various experiments and tests being undertaken for real, which is really helpful. The reader also gets an insight into some of the more contentious aspects of the science of stickiness, where Abbott is entirely prepared to declare that some of his colleagues in the field are simply wrong.

The reason this book is excellent is that we totally under-appreciate how important adhesives are in our everyday lives. The natural tendency is just to think of the glues we use for a spot of DIY - but it's so much more. Those glues are all there, from epoxy to superglue, but that's just the start. Not just the sticky tapes we use every day but all the packaging, for instance, that relies on adhesives that we don't even notice. (Think, for example, of what keeps the top on a yoghurt pot.) This isn't just a matter of convenience, but of keeping our food safe. And, of course, adhesives also play a big role in the construction of modern cars, trains and aircraft.

Unfortunately there is a downside to the book too. Abbott has huge enthusiasm for his topic, but like the passion of a trainspotter or enthusiast for an obscure 70s prog rock band, that enthusiasm for a pet topic is hard to pass on beyond the initial 'Wow!' All the applications of adhesives are really important, and the different types of adhesive are interesting. But Abbott takes us into more detail than we really want, meaning there were pages at a time I had to force myself not to skip to get to the next interesting bit. The book would have benefited from having a much sterner editor if it was intended to appeal more to a general audience.

Don't get me wrong. It's by far the best book about adhesives and adhesion I've ever read. (Actually, it's the only book about adhesives and adhesion I've ever read.) And if you want to know more - and you really should, because they are both important and interesting - it gives you everything you'll want to know and much more. I just wish there was a bit less of the much more.

Hardback:    
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Luna: Moon Rising (SF) - Ian McDonald ****

I'm not the natural audience for this book. Game of Thrones l eaves me cold - and it's hard not to feel the influence of GoT (and a whole lot of Dune )   underneath a veneer of science fiction and the trappings of a South American drug cartel in the cod-medieval family power battles and chivalric details. There are even dragons (of a sort). I'd be really sad if the future did involve this sort of throwback feudalism. However, remarkably, despite this I found Luna: Moon Rising kept me engaged. The fact is that Ian McDonald can put together a good plot with intricate machinations, which is enough to carry the reader through what can be a bewildering collection of characters. The two page scene-setter saying who did what to whom at the start was useful, but I could have done with family trees for the main family as I was constantly forgetting who was who - especially easy as McDonald endows many families with characters with the same first initial (e.g. Ariel and Al...
Post a Comment
Read more

Adventures of a Computational Explorer - Stephen Wolfram ***

Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the scientist's mathematical tool of choice, Mathematica, plus a whole host of other software products, including the uncanny Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine, is undoubtedly a genius of the first order. In this book, we get an uncensored excursion into the mind of genius - which is, without doubt, a fascinating prospect. The book consists of a collection of essays and speeches that Wolfram has produced over the last ten to fifteen years, covering an eclectic range of topics. Like all such collections, the result is something that lacks the coherence of a book with a narrative that runs through it, inevitably introducing a degree of repetition and a mix of interesting and not-so-interesting topics - but there's likely to be something to catch the attention anyone who is into computing or mathematics. One of the most interesting pieces is the opening one, where Wolfram describes being a consultant on the SF movie Arrival. He seems to hav...
Post a Comment
Read more

E=mc2: A biography of the world’s most famous equation – David Bodanis *****

David Bodanis is a storyteller, and he fulfils this role with flair in E=mc2. The premise of the book is simple – Einstein himself has been biographed (biographised?) to death, but no one has picked out this most famous of equations, dusted it down and told us what it means, where it comes from and what it has delivered. Allegedly, Bodanis was inspired to write the book after hearing see an interview with actress Cameron Diaz in which she commented that she’d really like to know what that famous collection of letters was all about. Although the book had been around for a while already when this review was written (September 2005), it seemed a very apt moment to cover it, as the equation is, as I write, exactly 100 years old. So when better to have a biography? Bodanis starts off by telling us about the individual elements of the equation. What the different letters mean, where the equal sign comes from and so on. This is entertaining, though he seems to tire of the approach on...
Post a Comment
Read more