No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale |  | Authors: Felice C. Frankel, George M. Whitesides
Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $35.00
Buy New: $21.94
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Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 144847
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 192
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.6
Dimensions (in): 10.2 x 9.9 x 0.9
ISBN: 0674035666
Dewey Decimal Number: 620.5
EAN: 9780674035669
ASIN: 0674035666
Publication Date: November 9, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9780674035669 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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Product Description
A small revolution is remaking the world. The only problem is, we can’t see it. This book uses dazzling images and evocative descriptions to reveal the virtually invisible realities and possibilities of nanoscience. An introduction to the science and technology of small things, No Small Matter explains science on the nanoscale. Authors Felice C. Frankel and George M. Whitesides offer an overview of recent scientific advances that have given us our ever-shrinking microtechnology—for instance, an information processor connected by wires only 1,000 atoms wide. They describe the new methods used to study nanostructures, suggest ways of understanding their often bizarre behavior, and outline their uses in technology. This book explains the various means of making nanostructures and speculates about their importance for critical developments in information processing, computation, biomedicine, and other areas. No Small Matter considers both the benefits and the risks of nano/microtechnology—from the potential of quantum computers and single-molecule genomic sequencers to the concerns about self-replicating nanosystems. By making the practical and probable realities of nanoscience as comprehensible and clear as possible, the book provides a unique vision of work at the very boundaries of modern science. (20091121)
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| Customer Reviews:
 A remarkable book on a remarkable topic November 21, 2009
R. Ward (Boston, MA)
21 out of 24 found this review helpful
This is an exceptionally cool book. It's an eclectic look at how important the things we cannot see are in our daily lives. Have you ever had a pregnancy test? Played a viola? Listened to a vinyl record? Lit a candle? Read this book and learn about what happened at the microscopic level. The pictures are extraordinary, and the text is clear, vibrant and informal. Strongly recommended. Don't miss the section at the end (Five Not-So-Easy Pieces) where the photographer explains how she obtained some of the images. I love the glass apple with the square shadow.
Fascinating July 3, 2010
ConsiderThis (Virginia, USA)
My dad is an amateur scientist and photographer and I got this for him for his birthday...he loved it.
 Big Matter December 26, 2009
Deeth Keynes-Neff (Southern California)
13 out of 16 found this review helpful
This lovely coffee-table book contains 60 full-page illustrations, each accompanied by an explanatory essay. The illustrations came from Felice Frankel, who is on the staff of both MIT and Harvard; the essays are by George Whitesides, a famous chemist at Harvard.
Combining art and science is not an easy task. The Frankel-Whitesides agenda worked most naturally for the pictures numbered 15 (laminar flow), 37, (microreactor) and 40 (Christmas tree mixer). In all three, Frankel photographed a microchemistry gadget and Whitesides explained how it worked. At the other extreme, the essay accompanying illustration number 58 clearly explains how a fuel cell works but the adjacent photograph shows a crumpled-up sample of the proton-selective membrane taken out of a fuel cell. What did we learn from the photo? The membrane is black and crumples easily. If the membrane had been white and stiff, the fuel cell would still have worked in the way that the essay explained.
Illustration 34 is entitled Counting on Two Fingers. It would have been better entitled Counting on One Finger. The word binary refers to two states of one finger: raised and down.
On pages 153 to 163, Frankel describes the techniques she used to produce the illustrations; its a fascinating story. However, I got hung up on her explanation of the carbon nanotube, illustration #7 in the book. On page 158, she says that she placed a rolled transparent picture of a graphite sheet on her flatbed scanner and obtained the image that she processed later into the final illustration. I tried the cross eyed stereo test on her final product, and the carbon nanotube stood up in a beautiful, three-dimensional view. The implication is that her final product has perspective; my guess is that she made a camera photograph of the original tube instead of using a flatbed scanner.
Picking on some minor errors doesnt destroy the value of the book. However, it does raise an interesting question. Years ago, one of my friends authored a textbook on oceanography. After the book appeared, messages came trickling in pointing out minor errors in the book. The disturbing part was that no two messages uncovered the same error. My friend said that he could not reject the hypothesis that there were an infinite number of errors in his oceanography book. Im not saying that No Small Matter contains an infinite number of errors, but when the authors set out to speak for the full range of nanoscale technology they have to beware of the devil that lurks in the details.
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