Read and Download eBook Full
Author: Ivan Amato
Publisher:
Published: 1997-04-17
Total Pages: 312
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMuch more than a history of the material sciences, Stuff brims with interviews with cutting-edge experts in the field, many of whom are building new materials literally atom by atom, and describes such astounding achievements as artificial diamonds created from peanut butter and how nanotechnologists are building new-age, state-of-the-art machines no thicker than a few hundred atoms.
Author: Mark Miodownik
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 277
ISBN-13: 0544236041
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAn eye-opening adventure deep inside the everyday materials that surround us, from concrete and steel to denim and chocolate, packed with surprising stories and fascinating science.
Author: Peter Menzel
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 1994
Total Pages: 274
ISBN-13: 9780871564306
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA photo-journey through the homes and lives of 30 families, revealing culture and economic levels around the world.
Author: Julie Hill
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-01-06
Total Pages: 370
ISBN-13: 1409040232
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWouldn't you like: - Products that don't damage the environment? - A better way of life without agonising about your 'footprint'? - To really know your stuff? Climate change? Biofuels? Nuclear power? Landfills? Recycling? Renewable energy? Environmental issues can feel overwhelming. But, in fact, it is simple; it all comes down to one thing - stuff. Our use of the Earth's resources - whether a crisp packet or a cargo ship, a T-shirt or a wind turbine - has an inescapable impact on our future. In The Secret Life of Stuff, Julie Hill uncovers the origins and the true cost of what we use. Her inventory of over-consumption may shock but it is the first step towards overcoming waste. The misuse of stuff is not your fault, it's a product of history. But it is only by understanding what has gone wrong, that everyone - politicians, business people and us as consumers - can create a new and better material world.
Author: Tim Dant
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education (UK)
Published: 1999-08-16
Total Pages: 239
ISBN-13: 0335231314
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"This should become a core text for second year courses in sociology and cultural studies... it synthesizes a vast body of literature and a complex range of debates into a text which is at once accessible, engaging and stimulating... it will lead to students seeing and thinking about the material world in a totally new light and can be used as a way into key theoretical debates." Keith Tester, Professor of Social Theory, University of Portsmouth In what ways do we interact with material things? How do material objects affect the way we relate to each other? What are the connections between material things and social processes like fashion, discourse, art and design? Through wearing clothes, keeping furniture, responding to the ring of the telephone, noticing the signature on a painting, holding a paperweight and in many other ways, we interact with objects in our everyday lives. These are not merely functional relationships with things but are connected to the way we relate to other people and the culture of the particular society we live in - they are social relations. This engaging book draws on established theoretical work, including that of Simmel, Marx, McLuhan, Barthes and Baudrillard as well as a range of contemporary empirical work from many humanities disciplines. It uses ideas drawn from this work to explore a variety of things - from stone cairns to denim jeans, televisions to penis rings, houses to works of art - to understand something of how we live with them.
Author: M. Grant Norton
Publisher: Springer Nature
Published: 2021-06-30
Total Pages: 211
ISBN-13: 3030752135
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis book examines ten materials—flint, clay, iron, gold, glass, cement, rubber, polyethylene, aluminum, and silicon—explaining how they formed, how we discovered them, why they have the properties they do, and how they have transformed our lives. Since the dawn of the Stone Age, we have shaped materials to meet our needs and, in turn, those materials have shaped us. The fracturing of flint created sharp, curved surfaces that gave our ancestors an evolutionary edge. Molding clay and then baking it in the sun produced a means of recording the written word and exemplified human artistic imagination. As our ability to control heat improved, earthenware became stoneware and eventually porcelain, the most prized ceramic of all. Iron cast at high temperatures formed the components needed for steam engines, locomotives, and power looms—the tools of the Industrial Revolution. Gold has captivated humans for thousands of years and has recently found important uses in biology, medicine, and nanotechnology. Glass shaped into early and imperfect lenses not only revealed the microscopic world of cells and crystals, but also allowed us to discover stars and planets beyond those visible with the naked eye. Silicon revolutionized the computer, propelling us into the Information Age and with it our interconnected social networks, the Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence. Written by a materials scientist, this book explores not just why, but also how certain materials came to be so fundamental to human society. This enlightening study captivates anyone interested in learning more about the history of humankind, our ingenuity, and the materials that have shaped our world.
Author: Craig Kielburger
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 322
ISBN-13: 0743298314
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFor anyone who has ever yearned for a better life and a better world, the Kielburgers challenge people to improve their own lives by helping others, and to recognize what is truly valuable.
Author: Laura Lieto
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-11-06
Total Pages: 180
ISBN-13: 1317564464
DOWNLOAD EBOOKToday, urban scholars think of cities and regions as evolving through networks of human associations, technologies, and natural ecologies. This being the case, planners are faced with the task of navigating a profoundly material world. Planning with and for humans alone is unacceptable: in the unfolding of urban processes, non-human things cannot be ignored. This inclusive vision has consequences for how planners envision the connections among norms, technologies and life-worlds as well as how they design and implement their plans. The contributors to this volume utilize a variety of examples – ecologically-sensitive, regional planning in Naples (Italy); congestion pricing in New York City; and public participation in Europe, among others – to explore how planners engage a heterogeneous and restless world. Inspired by assemblage thinking and actor-network theory, each chapter draws on this "new materialism" to acknowledge, in quite pragmatic ways, that spatial politics is a process of becoming that is inseparable from the materiality of urban practices.
Author: Victoria Finlay
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2022-06-07
Total Pages: 430
ISBN-13: 1639361642
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA magnificent work of original research that unravels history through textiles and cloth—how we make it, use it, and what it means to us. How is a handmade fabric helping save an ancient forest? Why is a famous fabric pattern from India best known by the name of a Scottish town? How is a Chinese dragon robe a diagram of the whole universe? What is the difference between how the Greek Fates and the Viking Norns used threads to tell our destiny? In Fabric, bestselling author Victoria Finlay spins us round the globe, weaving stories of our relationship with cloth and asking how and why people through the ages have made it, worn it, invented it, and made symbols out of it. And sometimes why they have fought for it. She beats the inner bark of trees into cloth in Papua New Guinea, fails to handspin cotton in Guatemala, visits tweed weavers at their homes in Harris, and has lessons in patchwork-making in Gee's Bend, Alabama - where in the 1930s, deprived of almost everything they owned, a community of women turned quilting into an art form. She began her research just after the deaths of both her parents —and entwined in the threads she found her personal story too. Fabric is not just a material history of our world, but Finlay's own journey through grief and recovery.
Author: Faith D'Aluisio
Publisher:
Published: 1996
Total Pages: 278
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKA companion to the groundbreaking bestseller Material World: A Global Family Portrait, this remarkable volume portrays the striking similarities and profound differences in the lives of women around the world at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Under the direction of Faith D’Aluisio and Peter Menzel, a team of renowned women journalists traveled the world to take a close look at the lives of women in twenty disparate lands. In first-person interviews of startling candor, the women share their feelings about family, children, money, love, sex, and marriage. These interviews, together with 375 stunning full-color photographs, create a powerful multicultural portrait of the half of humanity that all too often remains invisible.
