Why Things Break: Understanding the World by the Way It Comes Apart by Mark Eberhart

I think I picked this one up through paperbackswap.com a long while back.

This book goes through the history of materials science, with specific interest in fracture mechanics.  Apparently, real knowledge of why things break, versus when they break, is fairly recent, in the last 30 years or so.

It discusses airplane crashes, the Titanic, the space shuttle explosions, and other major engineering failures.  We delve into the details at the molecular level, what makes things bend versus break, and where the state of the art was in 2003.  Probably much more advanced now, given the rate at which we’ve been growing our knowledge.

I’m not going to run out and become a materials scientist, but I still found it fascinating.