“The String and Glue of our World” is a book about the science, engineering, history, and art of making things out of composites told in a manner that is hopefully approachable, engaging, and entertaining, even for the casual reader. It is not intended to replace or even be a textbook on the subject nor for the serious practitioner who has lots of experience with composites and needs a reference book. You don’t have to be a Ph.D. engineer or scientist to understand the book and appreciate the significance and beauty of composite materials.

String and Glue is arranged in a sense like what Elon Musk describes as the most important way to view knowledge – as a “semantic tree”. In that vein, I introduce first the history and motivation for the why of composites, then start with the building blocks of these materials – the elements themselves from the Periodic Table and why each of the elements I focus on are important. This forms the trunk of the tree – the trunk of our semantic tree of knowledge of composites. Then I build out the branches of the tree with descriptions of the strings, glues, how they are put together, and who is putting them together. Of course, each of these three main branches has its own sub-branches. And then toward the end of the book I give you some ideas about how to get involved in this industry and make the magic happen for yourself. Follow me on this journey into this fascinating subject and maybe learn how to make the magic happen for yourself – become a composite material aficionado.

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This Week’s News about Recycling and End-of-Life Composites

#composites, #sustainability, #recycling, #end_of_life_composites, #thermolysis This week I’m going to make my newsletter just a bit shorter than what I did last week with all of the pictures of sailboats that use recycled or natural fibers for primary structure. There are a couple of fairly newsworthy things that have happened just in the last few weeks that I want to focus on this week. And I want to also let everyone know that I am going to take a couple of weeks off wri

13 minutes ago6 min read

Natural Fibers and Racing Sailboats – How Much Fun is That?

#racingsailboats, #sustainability, #naturalfiber, #flaxfiber, #bamboofiber, #bioresins I saw an article in Composites World this week about a flax fiber boat manufacturer I wrote about two and a half years ago – Greenboats – that has been building recreational sailboat hulls since about 2020 using flax fiber. They source their flax of course from France which grows more of this stuff than any other country in Europe. Anyway, the article is about a strategic partnership betw

Nov 268 min read

Composite Fiber from Rocks? Yes, as a Matter of Fact

#composites, #sustainability, #basaltfiber, #basalt, #fibers I have been seeing some interesting posts lately about the application of basalt fibers to all manner of composite material products and parts. I had not thought much about it until a recent post in Composites World (11/10/2025) talked about a new replacement for steel rebar made from basalt fibers. For those of you that aren’t rock people or that did not grow up in a part of the country where there were volcanoes

Nov 198 min read

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This Week’s News about Recycling and End-of-Life Composites

#composites, #sustainability, #recycling, #end_of_life_composites, #thermolysis This week I’m going to make my newsletter just a bit shorter than what I did last week with all of the pictures of sailboats that use recycled or natural fibers for primary structure. There are a couple of fairly newsworthy things that have happened just in the last few weeks that I want to focus on this week. And I want to also let everyone know that I am going to take a couple of weeks off wri

13 minutes ago6 min read

Natural Fibers and Racing Sailboats – How Much Fun is That?

#racingsailboats, #sustainability, #naturalfiber, #flaxfiber, #bamboofiber, #bioresins I saw an article in Composites World this week about a flax fiber boat manufacturer I wrote about two and a half years ago – Greenboats – that has been building recreational sailboat hulls since about 2020 using flax fiber. They source their flax of course from France which grows more of this stuff than any other country in Europe. Anyway, the article is about a strategic partnership betw

Nov 268 min read

Composite Fiber from Rocks? Yes, as a Matter of Fact

#composites, #sustainability, #basaltfiber, #basalt, #fibers I have been seeing some interesting posts lately about the application of basalt fibers to all manner of composite material products and parts. I had not thought much about it until a recent post in Composites World (11/10/2025) talked about a new replacement for steel rebar made from basalt fibers. For those of you that aren’t rock people or that did not grow up in a part of the country where there were volcanoes

Nov 198 min read

A Few More Tidbits in Composites Sustainability News

#composites, #sustainability, #energyefficiency, #renewableenergy, #fibers, #resins I received my November Issue of the Composites World magazine (electronically of course) this week and as usual it had a couple of interesting developments in the world of composite materials sustainability, one of which is sort of fun – if you like water sports. So, I thought I would write about these and a couple of other things that I came across in my information feed about composites. A

Nov 125 min read

ABOUT ME

Ned Patton, Ph.D., P.E. lives and works in San Diego California. He has more than 40 years of experience in research and technology development, and has been involved with and has been a proponent of composites for over 35 of those years. Currently working at Oceaneering International as a senior technical professional, he is actively developing composite material parts and structures for use undersea.