Middle World The Restless Heart of Matter and Life

About this book

Between the microscopic world of quarks and atoms, and the macroscopic (observable) one of pebbles, planets and galaxies, there is another world, strangely neglected by science since Isaac Newton. It is inhabited by pollen, DNA and viruses - not to mention globules of paint, shampoo, milk and chocolate. Its tiny denizens have one thing in common: they cannot keep still. Physicist Mark Haw tells the pacy story of how scientists finally saw the restless middle world 200 years ago, having ignored it for so long. How, at the beginning of the twentieth century, it spectacularly answered Einstein's most basic question about the nature of matter. And how we then ignored it again until the past decade or so. Finally Haw reveals that, today, understanding the weird, jiggling 'mesoscale' has become central to nanotechnology, medicine and working out the origins of life.

Reviews:

'A delightful story of an overlooked and underappreciated science and the scientists who made it. The writing never falters.' - Mark Buchanan, author of Nexus

Contents

Tiny Things That Can't Stand Still - An Accidental Discovery - Gardens of Delight, Orchards of Determinism - Theories of Everything... and Rice Pudding - Statistics and Two Giant Intellects - A Question of Reality - The Importance of Being Einstein - Rubber Balls - Good Dice, Bad Dice - Nanomachines, Nanopromise and Nanothreat - Living Roots - The Cradle of Creation

Customer Reviews

Biography

MARK HAW is a Materials Scientist at the University of Nottingham, UK, having spent a decade researching Brownian motion at the University of Edinburgh and the Ecole des Mines, France. He has written Physics and Chemistry features for Nature and Physics World, published numerous short stories and penned three novels.