What books do I read in order to know about physical stuff?
June 17, 2010 8:40 PM   Subscribe

What books or websites do I read to know more about the materials and craft of the world, both human and organic?

Here I am, a liberal arts major. I sit in my room. My room is in a house. How was it built? I don't know. This bothers me. I want to know things. There's some plaster, right? Cool: What's that? How does that get made? Where do those materials come from? How do we get them from the earth? Check out my parquet floor: How do you make one of those?

Basically, I'd like to know more about the composition and construction of all of the things around me. What are some things I'll want to read?

Anything from a really good engineering manual to an organic chemistry textbook is welcome.
posted by voronoi to Science & Nature (12 answers total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
A classic book for this kind of curiosity is The Secret House by David Bodanis. It goes into detail about what's going on at a micro-level during a person's ordinary day: how the wood in your floor responds to your feet, how the tiny air pockets in a tortilla chip crack when you crunch down on it, where the dust on your carpet comes from, etc. I read it when I was younger and loved it.
posted by dreamyshade at 8:54 PM on June 17, 2010 [2 favorites]


Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down (Gordon) might be up your alley. There's some light math but it's really more a book about the intuition of why things are built the way they are and what it really means to build something that's strong.

But I have to say, that old saying about the more you know, the more you know you don't know (or rather its contrapositive) holds here: what you're asking for is a deep, vast rabbit hole of knowledge that you could spend a lifetime exploring and never find the bottom.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:10 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


As for the 'how do you make one' part of the question, look for clips of the show How It's Made on youtube. As you can see from that link they have produced nearly 200 episodes covering the manufacture of all kinds of things.

You might also like some of the stuff by David MacAuley especially The Way Things Work.
posted by Rhomboid at 9:23 PM on June 17, 2010


What single book is the best introduction to your field (or specialization within your field) for laypeople?

You can spend a lifetime perusing this old Q&A and expanding your mind.
posted by carsonb at 9:27 PM on June 17, 2010


sounds like you may really get into a really good (and inexpensive for used copies) introduction to astronomy. all of the physical sciences descend from it, and once you have a decent understanding of the underlying principles that shape our universe, it's easier to understand how all the smaller parts fit into it...
posted by sexyrobot at 10:28 PM on June 17, 2010


I would first recommend you to look into a beautiful book called The Way Things Work, which was a childhood love of mine. As Rhomboid said, understanding how the world around us works is an immense topic full of compounding layers and history. It's absolutely fascinating and I applaud you for having the curiosity to seek it out. Fortunately, we could hardly live in a better age for this, and while certainly the availability, quality, and depth of information on many topics is lacking, the internet is an invaluable tool for finding your way around so much information. Go down the rabbit holes, read, watch, listen, and always try to understand how history has shaped our world.
posted by LifeEngineer at 10:36 PM on June 17, 2010 [1 favorite]


For this kind of thing I usually start at Wikipedia and bounce back and forth between there and Google Books, with occasional forays into the general internet. One of the cool things about including Google Books in the equation is that in addition to modern stuff there will be books that explain how it was done a hundred years ago before it got all manufactured in a factory and process quality controlled, etc., so you can get a view of how things were made in a more craftsmanlike fashion as well as modern details.
posted by XMLicious at 1:48 AM on June 18, 2010


I think this book fits the bill. Its called "Outside Lies Magic". I havent read it but its on my list of books similar to what you are looking for.
posted by Busmick at 5:31 AM on June 18, 2010


Also there is a Discovery channel series called "How its Made" that is really cool. They basically walk you through how things are made, with an announcer and simple instrumental music playing. Very plain and straightforward but very interesting.
It might be a good idea to read/watch some of these "high level" overview kind of things first to get an idea of what you would like to look into more, before you go an get textbooks etc. As someone said this si a very broad topic.
posted by Busmick at 5:38 AM on June 18, 2010


The best way to absorb this sort of knowledge is to run to wikipedia the second you get curious about something. It is usually a good jumping off point.

Here is some plaster, I wonder how it is made. Go to Wikipedia.

Whats the deal with glass? Go to Wikipedia.

You get the idea. Over time you will get a better understanding of your surroundings.

Side effect: scoring higher on trivia nights.
posted by cirrostratus at 9:01 AM on June 18, 2010


Came in here to say The Way Things Work, which is not only informative but very, very cool. But n'thing J.E. Gordon's books if you want more depth on structures in particular. Also Mario Salvadori who is somewhere between the two.
posted by DU at 10:13 AM on June 18, 2010


For houses in particular, I found David Owen's The Walls Around Us: The Thinking Person's Guide to How a House Works pretty informative and enjoyable.
posted by Jasper Fnorde at 7:29 PM on June 18, 2010


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