This book grew out of my desire to understand the mechanics of nanomaterials, and to be able to rationalize in my own mind the variety of topics on which the people around me were doing research at the time. The ?eld of nanomaterials has been growing rapidly since the early 1990s. I- tially, the ?eld was populated mostly by researchers working in the ?elds of synt- sis and processing. These scientists were able to make new materials much faster than the rest of us could develop ways of looking at them (or understanding them). However, a con?uence of interests and capabilities in the 1990s led...