Free field guide
Every material in it works. None of them shipped the way they should have, and in almost no case was the science the reason.
The seven cases are ordered by failure mode rather than chronology, so if you are short of time, start with whichever one describes your situation.
If you are a supplier holding a material you cannot get through a qualification gate, chapter seven is the one. If you are specifying materials for a product, chapter one will annoy you in a useful way.
The case I nearly cut was Zylon. People died in those vest failures, and there is a version of that story that is glib. But it is the necessary counterweight to every "trust the anomalous result" lesson in materials science, including one I have written myself about Kevlar.
Sometimes the anomalous property is the one that kills you. It is chapter three, and it is written carefully.
That is all for now. I write occasionally about why advanced materials fail to commercialise.
