Handmade A scientist's search for meaning through making

In this luminous, witty, and enormously appealing title, London-based materials scientist Ploszajski explores ten common materials, including glass, paper, wool, sugar, and steel, through visits with "artists, craftspeople and professionals" using them in the handmade world. She blows glass, knits, and gamely slams a hammer onto a hot poker placed on an anvil while visiting the talented people who work with materials that capture her attention. Inspired by a sparkling curiosity, she also investigates the ten substances through history and anthropology, while weaving her personal story throughout the narrative. Her tales of her Polish grandfather's work with plastics, and his narrow escape from World War II, plus her own adventure swimming the English Channel (where sugar played an important part in fueling her effort) are certainly inspiring. Ploszajski's enthusiasm is contagious and her obvious delight in learning brightens every page. The author's ability to impart the complexity of chemical processes in a manner easily understood and even enjoyed by nonscientists is impressive, and her charming footnotes bring humor to the discussion. Further enlivened by Hana Ayoob's illustrations, Handmade is exactly the sort of hybrid memoir that invites discussion and will likely spark further research.

Scientist Ploszajski leaves the laboratory for the atelier in her charming debut about the science of common materials. With wide-eyed wonder and a sense of humor, she examines the techniques behind the making of brass, paper, plastic, pottery, steel, and sugar, among other goods, and shares her attempts to produce them herself. Though she's clumsy at a potter's wheel and fumbled molten silica while blowing glass, she successfully delves into the chemistry and physics involved, explaining that clay comes from magma that reacted with granite and carbon dioxide underground, and that the "amorphous" molecular structure of glass makes it malleable when heated. Her examination of the substances' uses brings her to unexpected places, including Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway in Utah, where her expertise on the molecular structure of steel helped a team competing for a land speed record build a more durable car, as well as to the English Channel, where she relied on sugary treats to give her the energy to swim across it. Ploszajski is a talented science communicator, using analogies to illuminate the molecular world ("atoms that vibrate more energetically take up more space, like impassioned movers and shakers on the dance floor"), and the zany accounts of her fieldwork are lots of fun. This pop science adventure delights. (June)