Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form

By Esther Leslie

While it is responsible for today's abundance of flat screens--on televisions, computers, and mobile devices--most of us have only heard of it in the ubiquitous acronym, LCD, with little thought as to exactly what it is: liquid crystal. In this book, Esther Leslie enlightens us, offering an accessible and fascinating look at--not a substance, not a technology--but a wholly different phase of matter.
As she explains, liquid crystal is a curious material phase that organizes a substance's molecules in a crystalline form yet allows them to move fluidly like water. Observed since the nineteenth century, this phase has been a deep curiosity to science and, in more recent times, the key to a new era of media technology. In between that time, as Leslie shows, it has figured in cultural forms from Romantic landscape painting to snow globes, from mountaineering to eco-disasters, and from touchscreen devices to DNA. Expertly written but accessible, Liquid Crystals recounts the unheralded but hugely significant emergence of this unique form of matter.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 178023645X
• ISBN13: 9781780236452
• Release Date: January 2017
• Publisher: Reaktion Books
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.4"