Reviews
Liquid Rules: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flow Through Our Lives by Mark Miodownik
decafplease's review against another edition
5.0
Right now I'm experiencing that 4pm listlessness. It's either coffee or nap. Resistance is futile. No one is productive at 4pm. So here I am, writing about a book about liquids instead of...never you mind.
Liquid Rules: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flowed Through Our Lives (2020) is Mark Miodownik's follow-up to Stuff Matters: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials that Shape Our Man-made World (2014), which won the 2014 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science books and the 2015 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Communication Award. I didn’t know either awards existed but they seem relevant and most likely well-deserved because it is so, so easy to commend the quality of his writing.
I wouldn’t say Liquid Rules bears epistemological significance. But you don’t read a book about liquids because you think there’s some quintessential knowledge you’re missing. You read it because you passed year 12 chemistry and now you can have that moment of vainglory realising you didn’t memorise chemical compounds and equations for nothing because you actually understand what an actual scientist gasp is saying. HA. Just kidding.
I liked the title and thought it sounded unusual and entertaining. More importantly, I knew it wasn’t gonna be emotionally taxing. The kind of tension I’ve been experiencing has been unreal and I can’t explain why I’m so tense. I blame it on animal crossing which is meant to be a relaxing game but my perfectionism is ruining it for me. (Why can’t I place THIS bush next to THIS rock?!) In any case, I need something breezy but not fluffy.
What makes Liquid Rules entertaining is how casual Miodownik sounds. The entire book is structured around Miodownik’s flight to San Francisco where he is to attend a scientific conference. As he is going through customs and security, he muses on what makes peanut butter a liquid and not a solid according to airline regulations. As the plane is taking off, he considers the discovery of kerosene in the premodern era and the incredible fact that no one knew its awesome power. Then mid-flight, he provides an endless stream of anecdotes about the terrifying power of storm clouds (when the plane experiences turbulence), why he prefers soap bars over liquid soap (when he goes to the bathroom), why we find snot disgusting (when curry dribbles down his chin), why the invention of biro was a complex problem with a surprisingly simple solution (when he signs the arrival card), and finally, the future when we can store man-made data like digital photographs inside droplets of liquid (as he arrives at the scientific conference). It feels like you’re flying and you’re listening in to all the amusing did-you-knows as the person next to you chatters on about the marvellous things we’re seeing.
All in all, it’s like being offered a gaze into a secret network of things, where whaling in the nineteenth century is somehow related to the rise of the soap industry which is also related to the creation of soap opera during morning hours. The connective ‘thingness’ of life is suddenly made apparent and it is a wondrous sight. The world is a connected place. It’s connected by the seeping, oozing, dripping and molten liquids that flow in and out of us, around us, beneath us, and above us. Humans are 60% water and our planet is 70% water. We are living in an aqueous state on an aqueous planet, so it’s almost self-deceiving to think the world around us is solid and concrete when our body is formed in amniotic fluids and ends with being decomposed into minerals, water and gas. And isn’t it just the strangest thing to think one day, instead of relying on computers that speak in 0s and 1s, we will have biochemical computation that takes place on a molecular level? Yep. Mind blown.
Liquid Rules: The Delightful and Dangerous Substances That Flowed Through Our Lives (2020) is Mark Miodownik's follow-up to Stuff Matters: The Strange Stories of the Marvellous Materials that Shape Our Man-made World (2014), which won the 2014 Royal Society Winton Prize for Science books and the 2015 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Communication Award. I didn’t know either awards existed but they seem relevant and most likely well-deserved because it is so, so easy to commend the quality of his writing.
I wouldn’t say Liquid Rules bears epistemological significance. But you don’t read a book about liquids because you think there’s some quintessential knowledge you’re missing. You read it because you passed year 12 chemistry and now you can have that moment of vainglory realising you didn’t memorise chemical compounds and equations for nothing because you actually understand what an actual scientist gasp is saying. HA. Just kidding.
I liked the title and thought it sounded unusual and entertaining. More importantly, I knew it wasn’t gonna be emotionally taxing. The kind of tension I’ve been experiencing has been unreal and I can’t explain why I’m so tense. I blame it on animal crossing which is meant to be a relaxing game but my perfectionism is ruining it for me. (Why can’t I place THIS bush next to THIS rock?!) In any case, I need something breezy but not fluffy.
What makes Liquid Rules entertaining is how casual Miodownik sounds. The entire book is structured around Miodownik’s flight to San Francisco where he is to attend a scientific conference. As he is going through customs and security, he muses on what makes peanut butter a liquid and not a solid according to airline regulations. As the plane is taking off, he considers the discovery of kerosene in the premodern era and the incredible fact that no one knew its awesome power. Then mid-flight, he provides an endless stream of anecdotes about the terrifying power of storm clouds (when the plane experiences turbulence), why he prefers soap bars over liquid soap (when he goes to the bathroom), why we find snot disgusting (when curry dribbles down his chin), why the invention of biro was a complex problem with a surprisingly simple solution (when he signs the arrival card), and finally, the future when we can store man-made data like digital photographs inside droplets of liquid (as he arrives at the scientific conference). It feels like you’re flying and you’re listening in to all the amusing did-you-knows as the person next to you chatters on about the marvellous things we’re seeing.
All in all, it’s like being offered a gaze into a secret network of things, where whaling in the nineteenth century is somehow related to the rise of the soap industry which is also related to the creation of soap opera during morning hours. The connective ‘thingness’ of life is suddenly made apparent and it is a wondrous sight. The world is a connected place. It’s connected by the seeping, oozing, dripping and molten liquids that flow in and out of us, around us, beneath us, and above us. Humans are 60% water and our planet is 70% water. We are living in an aqueous state on an aqueous planet, so it’s almost self-deceiving to think the world around us is solid and concrete when our body is formed in amniotic fluids and ends with being decomposed into minerals, water and gas. And isn’t it just the strangest thing to think one day, instead of relying on computers that speak in 0s and 1s, we will have biochemical computation that takes place on a molecular level? Yep. Mind blown.
isabellesbooks's review against another edition
3.25
I’m conflicted about what rating to give this book, but I’m going to go with ~3.5 stars. I think this makes me a pretty boring person, but I would have preferred a book solely about the scientific aspects and facts we learned about liquids, rather than the plane ride storyline that was involved. To me, it distracted from the point of the book and I was just waiting for each chapter to actually “start.” A fantastic idea, but not the ideal execution. I loved learning about tea, ink, soap, you name it, but it came at the cost of waiting through random tangents and reading about the author taking forever in the bathroom during turbulence.
laurenpedersen's review against another edition
2.0
Mildly interesting. Made more entertaining by correlating topics with the author’s transcontinental airplane flight. Editing of sentences and paragraphs was too close though in audio format. I rarely heard the narrator breathe and thought some statement’s deserved more “space”.
eileen_critchley's review against another edition
3.0
***½
A fun and accessible way to present a science-y topic.
{library, audio}
A fun and accessible way to present a science-y topic.
{library, audio}
bngoctopus's review against another edition
4.0
Miodownik's books are a joy to peruse, actively making material science digestible and enjoyable. A sentence on page 174 makes the rapid advancement in science particularly real – "Certainly, it's hard to imagine a time when we'll be able to collect more data from a complete no-fly scenario, given that flying is such an important part of global culture."
Two short years after the book was published, COVID-19 and the massive reduction in global travel has seen papers studying the exact scenario. I'm excited for what the following two years will hold for new understandings of the way the world works, as well as what Miodownik will pen next.
Two short years after the book was published, COVID-19 and the massive reduction in global travel has seen papers studying the exact scenario. I'm excited for what the following two years will hold for new understandings of the way the world works, as well as what Miodownik will pen next.