(He does make some digressions and asides along the way.) The author begins with the explosive properties of his airplane’s fuel before moving on to the intoxicating properties of the plane’s cocktail offerings and an account of his near-death experience in the frigid waters of a popular swimming hole in Dublin. Liquids, writes the author in his loquacious introduction, are “anarchic” and “have a knack for destroying things.” When not properly contained, “they are always on the move, seeping, corroding, dripping and escaping our control.” To shape his meditation on liquids, Miodownik presents something of a contained laboratory by setting his entire thesis within the bounds of his nonstop flight from London to San Francisco. College London Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials that Shape Our Man-Made World, 2014) follows up his prizewinning debut with an equally focused tour of liquids, “the alter ego of dependable solid stuff.”
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