• Looks at a wide range of materials from steel, concrete, and plastics to wood, semiconductors, oil, gas, and food
• Considers materials within their scientific, industrial, and cultural context - influencing communications, the media, architecture, building, and the fine arts
• Explains how materials are made and how they behave as we use them
• Shows how material science brings together engineering and technology with physics, chemistry, and biology

  
The study of materials is a major field of research that supports and drives innovation in technology. Using modern scientific techniques, materials scientists and engineers explore and manipulate materials, and create new ones with remarkable strength and extraordinary optical and electrical properties. In this Very Short Introduction, Christopher Hall looks at a wide range of materials, from steel, wood, and rubber, to gold, silicon, and graphene, describing how materials are used, how their properties arise from their internal structure, and how useful and novel things are made from them. He concludes by looking at how the global scale of materials consumption now threatens the goal of sustainability.