Handmade: A Scientist’s Search for Meaning Through Making cover art

Handmade: A Scientist’s Search for Meaning Through Making

A Scientist's Search for Meaning Through Making

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

Handmade: A Scientist’s Search for Meaning Through Making

By: Anna Ploszajski
Narrated by: Anna Ploszajski
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £14.03

Buy Now for £14.03

LIMITED TIME OFFER

£0.99/mo for 3 months - terms apply. Offer ends 24 August 2026.
From atomic structures to theories about magnetic forces, scientific progress has given us a good grasp on the properties of many different materials. However, science cannot tell us how to measure the temperature of steel just by looking at it, or how to sculpt stone into all kinds of shapes, or what it feels like to blow up a balloon of glass. Handmade is the story of materials through making and doing. Author and material scientist Anna Ploszajski journeys into the domain of makers and craftspeople to comprehend how the most popular materials really work. Their accumulated knowledge through handson trial and error has been gathered by generation after generation of experimenters and tinkerers, and they understand the materiality of objects far better than any scientist with a textbook.

Anna’s is the fresh and entertaining perspective of someone at the forefront of the field. Each chapter centres around an everyday material and features Anna’s accounts of learning from masters of their respective crafts. Along the way, she builds a fuller picture of materials and their place in society. She visits a female blacksmith artist to see, hear, smell and strike steel herself, explores how working with one of the most primal of materials, clay, has brought about some of the most advanced technologies, and delves down to the atomic scale of glass to find out what makes it ‘glassy’. Handmade affords us a new understanding of the materials we encounter every day and an appreciation for the skills needed to fashion them into objects that are perfectly formed for the jobs they do.©2021 Anna Ploszajski (P)2021 W. F. Howes Ltd Crafts & Hobbies Engineering Physics Science
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
All stars
Most relevant
Some authors are the best to read the book themselves, like Anna.
The enthusiasm and wonder are expressed in her voice taking the listener into the magic of the materials around us.
The history of these elements and how they function is not only educational but fascinating and grippingly told.
I also enjoy getting to know Anna by the interwoven personal stories of the different materials.
A wonderful book by a great person.

A fabulous book about what is all around us

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Well written, very informative, interesting anecdotes, and well narrated. The author/narrator has an attractive voice that is easy to listen to.

Great book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.