Booklist and On-line Content
Introductory books for those interested in Materials Science degree programmes
Newer books
A Materials Science Guide to Superconductors and How to Make Them Super, S. Speller, Oxford University Press (2022) ISBN: 978-0192858344
Handmade: A Scientist's Search for Meaning through Making, A. Ploszajski, Bloomsbury Publishing (2021) ISBN-13: 978-1472971074
What's Next? ed J. Al Khalili, Profile Books (2017) ISBN-13: 978-1781258958
Stuff Matters: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials that Shape Our Man-made World, M. Miodownik, Viking (2013) ISBN-13: 978-0670920549
The New Science of Strong Materials or Why You Don’t Fall Through the Floor, J.E. Gordon, Princeton University Press, Revised Edition (2008) ISBN-13 978 0691125480
Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour, P. Ball, Vintage Books (2008) ISBN-13: 978-0099507130
Made to Measure: New Materials for the 21st Century, P. Ball, Princeton University Press (1999) ISBN-13: 978-0691009759
Where Stuff Comes From, H. Molotch, Routledge (2005) ISBN-13: 978-0415950428
The Material World, R. Cotterill, Cambridge University Press (2008) ISBN-13: 978-0521451475
Materials for Engineering, J.W. Martin, Woodhead Publishing Ltd., (2006) ISBN-13: 978-1845691578
Older books
(The examples in these books are not recent, but the books still give a sense of certain key aspects of Materials Science)
Stuff: the materials the world is made of, I Amato, Harper (1998) ISBN-13: 978-0380731534
Tomorrow's Materials, K.E. Easterling, Institute of Materials (1990) Available from: Institute of Materials, 1 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1Y 5DB. ISBN-13: 978-0901462831
Materials & their Uses, W. Bolton, Butterworth-Heinemann (1996) (covers Materials modules for A-level Physics and A-level Design & Technology) ISBN-13: 978-0750627269
Structures - or why things don't fall down, J.E. Gordon, Penguin (1991) ISBN-13: 978-0140136289
An introductory book for children
If you have a young sibling who is curious about Materials, have a look at Jess Wade's illustrated book Nano: The Spectacular Science of the Very (Very) Small, Walker Books (2021) ISBN-13: 978-1406384925
A book for all, providing insight into the importance of materials
Material World - A Substantial Story of Our Past and Future, Ed Conway, WH Allen (2023) ISBN 978-0753559154
On-line content
There is a wealth of information about Materials, Materials Science, and Materials Engineering available on-line; why not browse?
A good place to start is the Royal Institution, which hosts an amazing range of talks. Here are a few examples:
Serena Corr's talk The Hunt for New Batteries
Saiful Islam's talk How Materials Science Can Help Create a Greener Future
Anna Ploszajski's talk Smart Materials of the Future
Henry Snaith's talk Metal Halide Perovskites: A New Family of Semiconductors
Mark Miodownik's talk Strange Materials
Charles Stirling's 2019 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: A clip from Lecture 5 - Tensile Strength Challenge: Cotton vs. Steel
Saiful Islam's 2016 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures: Lecture 3 - Fully Charged
Mark Miodownik's 2015 Birmingham EPS Christmas Lecture Stuff Matters
This unusual Periodic Table illustrates the availability of and demand for each of the 90 natural elements.
In the following 'Oxford Sparks' animations, videos and features, some Materials Scientists from the Department of Materials at Oxford speak and/or write about their work:
Victoria Strutt: Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it’s superalloys!
Jack Haley: Materials for nuclear fusion: how do you confine a sun to a box?
Merel Lefferts: Can we make a sensor that can match a sniffer dog?
Jennifer Le Roy & Pascal Gehring: How does electricity flow through small objects?
Sebastian Bonilla: What's that solar panel doing?
Simon Benjamin: Towards a Quantum Computer
Simon Benjamin: Caging Schrödinger's Cat - Quantum Nanotechnology Part 1 - Into the Nanoworld
Simon Benjamin: Caging Schrödinger's Cat - Quantum Nanotechnology Part 6 - Grand Vision
