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The New Science of Strong Materials, or Why You Don't Fall Through the Floor by J.E. Gordon is a great casual introduction to material science that touches on this relation between size and fatigue life.

However, it was written in 1968 before these semiconductors were developed. Do you have any recommendations for further reading on the design or history of MEMS?

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Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down, also by J.E. Gordon, is the macroscopic plain-English version. Highly recommend it.

I once described it as "Civil Engineering for Dummies", and the chemical engineer across the table from me said "Isn't that a redundant statement?" (she's married to a civil engineer, so perhaps that colored her experience.)

Structures is great. I picked it up after receiving The New Science... as a gift. It's propping up my monitor at my WFH desk now, so it literally is why things don't fall down.

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