Hidden Wonders: The Subtle Dialogue Between Physics and Elegance

The hidden elegance in everyday objects and physical mechanisms, from crumpled paper to sandcastles. The hidden elegance in everyday objects and physical mechanisms, from crumpled paper to sandcastles. Hidden Wonders focuses on the objects that populate our everyday life--crumpled paper, woven fabric, a sand pile--but looks at them with a physicist's eye, revealing a hidden elegance in mundane physical mechanisms. In six chapters--Builders, Creating Shapes, Building with Threads, From Sand to Glass, Matter in Motion, and Fractures--the authors present brief stories, set in locales ranging from the Eiffel Tower to a sandcastle, that illustrate the little wonders hidden in the ordinary. A simple experiment that readers can perform at home concludes each story. More than 200 illustrations bring the stories to life.

Table of Contents:
Preface ................................................................................... vi I. BUILDERS ...........................................................1 The Elegance of Small and Slender Things................................2 Azay-le-Rideau or Roofs of Beauty........................................... 10 The Eiffel Tower......................................................................... 18 Inner Balance..............................................................................26 Surface Tension ..........................................................................34 II. CREATING SHAPES.............................43 And We Think of Bubbles as Fragile!.......................................44 The Tragedy of Foam .................................................................52 Necklaces and Catenaries..........................................................60 Elegant Stone Arches.................................................................68 Shells and Mille-Feuilles ........................................................ 76 III. BUILDING WITH THREAD ........85 An Eight-Legged Builder..........................................................86 Wet Hair.....................................................................................94 Birds as Architects ...................................................................104 An Impressive Bridge of Grasses..............................................114 Folders and Tailors: Masters of Volume.................................. 122 Weaving and Braiding ............................................................. 132 Folding and Crumpling Paper Balls........................................ 142 IV. FROM SAND TO GLASS............... 153 Seeing a World in a Grain of Sand.......................................... 154 The Secret of Sandcastles......................................................... 162 Earthen Architecture............................................................... 172 Liquid Stone: Concrete ............................................................ 180 The Saga of Fusing Granular Matter....................................... 188 States of Glass .......................................................................... 196 V. MATTER IN MOTION......................... 205 Beams Bend but Do Not Break...............................................206 Vaulting into the Air................................................................ 216 The Choreography of Pine Cones............................................. 224 Flying Seeds............................................................................. 232 Quaking Bows.......................................................................... 242 Uppity Grains of Sand ............................................................. 252 VI. FRACTURES .............................................261 Prehistoric Gems ..................................................................... 262 Pointed Tears ........................................................................... 270 The Geometry of Lettuce ....................................................... 278 Eloquent Craquelures ..............................................................286 Walking on Eggs ....................................................................294 Glass Teardrops .......................................................................302 Glossary .................................................................................... 310 Reading List............................................................................. 312 Acknowledgments.................................................................... 313

About the Author :
tienne Guyon is Emeritus Professor at ESPCI (Paris Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution), a fellow of the American Physical society and of the Institute of Physics, Honorary Director of the Ecole Normale Superieure, and coauthor of Built on Sand- The Science of Granular Materials (MIT Press). Jose Bico is Associate Professor at ESPCI-PSL (Paris Science Lettres Universite). Etienne Reyssat and Beno t Roman are CNRS researchers. All authors work at PMMH (Physics and Mechanics of Heterogenous Media) lab of ESPCI-PSL in Sorbonne Universite.

Review :
"Hidden Wonders fills a major gap in popular science books. Guyon and co-authors convey to their readers a modern and interdisciplinary approach to physics in a style rarely seen in the genre — with special homage to recent developments in soft-matter physics and engineering sciences. Their effort is much needed, and we scientists should look to inspire the next generation, because there are still plenty of mysteries and wonders to be discovered." — Marcelo A. Dias, Nature Physics