COMP CLOSED | Book Giveaway | The Secret Life of Number 8

Using reader-friendly language, Emeritus Professor Neil Broom transports the reader into the mysterious inner world of commonplace materials that have shaped the course of technological development up to modern times.

Taking its cue from an uninspiring fragment of rusted iron, The Secret Life of Number 8 leads the reader into the heart of a universe in miniature, one revealing the striking order, complexity, and elegance of those many materials that are part and parcel of everyday life. It is a structural journey of discovery progressing from the superficial to the microscopic and sub-microscopic levels, right down to the scale of the atoms or molecules – these constituting the building blocks of all materials.

The book focuses on commonplace materials that have so powerfully shaped the course of technological development up to modern times. Using reader-friendly, non-specialist language, the author explains how the structure of a material yields characteristics that we might either usefully exploit or take special care to avoid. Why, for example, are some materials strong, even super-strong, whereas others pathetically weak? Why are some solids ductile or malleable but others dangerously brittle. How can a weak metal such as aluminium be strengthened to the degree that it forms the material foundation of modern aviation? Why is it that temperature has a dramatic influence on the properties of many common plastics? Why do some metals, or metal combinations, annoyingly corrode, whereas others don’t? Answers to these questions and so many more, will be found in this book.

The Secret Life of Number 8 is richly illustrated throughout. It has more than 120 ‘homely’ images and diagrams and will appeal to a general readership, irrespective of the level of training in science, to readers who are simply curious about why materials behave the way they do.

Author Note:

‘Prior to my recent retirement I had, for several decades, taught a course on the science of materials to students entering the first year of their engineering degree programme at the University of Auckland. Year-after-year it was voted the most interesting of all the 8 courses required to be taken in that first year and was popular even with the bulk of students who went on to specialize in other engineering disciplines. I have always found that the science of materials had wide appeal and that the creation of a simplified layperson’s version of the topic might well be something worth tackling. With the gift of time in retirement came the ‘birth’ of The Secret Life of Number 8. My aim has been to take a very common artefact as a starting point to begin exploring the world of everyday materials at a level that would register easily with the non-specialist. I wanted the work to be ‘homely’ and richly illustrated, addressing at a lay level those puzzling questions that so often arise in our encounter with a wide range of everyday materials.’

About the author:

Neil attended Christchurch Boys’ High and then went on to complete his metallurgical engineering degree at Canterbury, Otago and Melbourne Universities. He then studied for his doctorate at the University of Auckland before taking up a 4-year research fellowship in the Department of Metallurgy and Materials Science at Cambridge University in the UK.

He returned to NZ to a Health Research Council-funded research position in the Engineering Faculty of the University of Auckland where, for some 27 years, he applied his engineering skills to tissue biomechanics research specifically in the areas of bioprosthetic heart-

valve development, cartilage and osteoarthritis, and spinal disorders. Neil then moved into an academic position in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering in the University of Auckland, one that combined both his love of pure research and the teaching of materials science to engineering students. During his lecturing career Neil has introduced multitudes of first year engineering students to the science of materials. Now retired, Neil is an Emeritus Professor and a Fellow of the Royal Society of NZ. Neil lives in Auckland and has been married to his wife Ruth for 55 years.

To read an article Neil has written about the book, click here.

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