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It's a Gas
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  • Published: 27 May 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241985595
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $26.99
Categories:

It's a Gas

The Magnificent and Elusive Elements that Expand Our World

Formats & editions
Paperback
27 May 2025
EBook
4 July 2024
Audiobook
4 July 2024
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The secret life of gases from the author of the best-selling, prize-winning Stuff Matters

Why are most gases invisible, odourless and tasteless? Why do some poison us and others make us laugh? And why do some power our engines while others make drinks fizzy? In It's a Gas, Mark Miodownik masterfully reveals an invisible world through his unique brand of scientific storytelling.


Taking us back to that exhilarating – and often dangerous – moment when scientists tried to work out exactly what they had discovered, Miodownik shows that gases are the formative substances of our modern world, each with its own weird and wonderful personality.


We see how seventeenth-century laughing gas parties led to the first use of anaesthetics in surgery, how the invention of the air valve in musical instruments gave us bicycles, cars and trainers, and how gases made us masters of the sea (by huge steamships) and skies (via extremely flammable balloons). This delight of a book reveals the immense importance of gases to modern civilisation.
  • Published: 27 May 2025
  • ISBN: 9780241985595
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $26.99
Categories:

About the author

Mark Miodownik

A Financial Times Master of Science and chosen by The Times as one of the 100 most influential scientists in the UK, Mark Miodownik is Professor of Materials and Society at University College London, where he is also Director of the Institute of Making. He is the author of the book Stuff Matters – a New York Times bestseller which won the Royal Society Winton Prize – and Liquid, which was shortlisted for the same prize. He presents BBC TV and radio programmes on science and engineering such as Everyday Miracles and How It Works.

MM

Also by Mark Miodownik

Liquid
Stuff Matters
See all

Praise for It's a Gas

It's not just a gas, it’s a blast. A brilliant, bracing journey though the past, present and future of the invisible stuff you can’t see, but is everywhere.

Ed Conway, author of Material World

Hugely enjoyable. From the bouncy castle to poison gas, from The Wizard of Oz to cappuccinos, this book has it all: plenty of belly laughs, but also warnings about the state of our world

Andrea Sella, chemist and broadcaster

With seamless storytelling and scientific flair, Mark unveils the captivating personalities of gases that fizz, pop, numb, smell, warm, and soar, illuminating the extraordinary role they play in our lives

Roger Highfield, Science Director at the Science Museum

Mark Miodownik is an exceptionally talented scientist, writer and communicator, and in this book he brings the invisible world of gas to vivid, visible life

Sophie Scott, author of The Brain: 10 Things You Should Know

A delight

Dara O Briain