Nanoscale

The world is made up of structures too small to see with the naked eye, too small tosee even with an electron microscope. Einstein established the reality of atoms and molecules in theearly 1900s. How can we see a world measured in fractions of nanometers? (Most atoms are less thanone nanometer, less than one-billionth of a meter, in diameter.) This beautiful and fascinating bookgives us a tour of the invisible nanoscale world. It offers many vivid color illustrations of atomicstructures, each accompanied by a short, engagingly written essay. The structures advance from thesimple (air, ice) to the complex (supercapacitator, rare earth magnet). Each subject was chosen notin search of comprehensiveness but because it illustrates how atomic structure creates a property(such as hardness, color, or toxicity), or because it has a great story, or simply because it isbeautiful. Thus we learn how diamonds ride volcanoes to the earth's surface (if they came up moreslowly, they'd be graphite, as in pencils); what form of carbon is named after Buckminster Fuller;who won in the x-ray vs. mineralogy professor smackdown; how a fuel cell works; when we use spinodaldecomposition in our daily lives (it involves hot water and a package of Jell-O), and much more. Theamazing color illustrations by Stephen Deffeyes are based on data from x-ray diffraction (a methodused in crystallography). They are not just pretty pictures but visualizations of scientific dataderived directly from those data. Together with Kenneth Deffeyes's witty commentary, they offer avivid demonstration of the diversity and beauty found at the nanometer scale.

Stephen E. Deffeyes is a freelance illustrator and designer.