Now that it’s summer, I am finally making good on my
promise to post chapter summaries of Materials
Science and Engineering: An Introduction, better known as the Callister
textbook. There are 22 chapters in total and approximately 11 weeks until Hell
Month aka the candidacy exam, so my goal is to cover about two chapters a week.
That being said, if there is any topic/chapter that you find especially
interesting—or if you just feel like being a super awesome friend—feel free to
talk to me about writing your own summary that I can add to this blog!
Materials science
and engineering plays an integral role in life as we know it—indeed, it not
only influences our everyday lives, but has governed the advancement of
humankind so much so that early civilizations are now described by their
materials development (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age). This chapter describes
the purpose of materials science and engineering and classifies materials into
several main categories.
The purpose of materials science and engineering
-materials science is the study of the relationship
between a material’s structure and its properties
-materials engineering is the design of a material’s structure
to produce desired properties
-from small scale to large scale, a material’s
structure—that is, its internal arrangement—includes subatomic, atomic,
microscopic, and macroscopic structure
-a material’s properties fall into the classifications of
mechanical, electrical, thermal, magnetic, optical, and deteriorative
-the way a material is processed influences its
structure, which in turn influences its properties, and ultimately determines
its performance
-materials are generally classified into the following
groups: metals, ceramics, polymers, composites, and advanced materials (this is
based off chemistry and atomic structure)
-metals: composed of one or more metallic elements, atoms
are arranged in orderly manner, dense, stiff yet ductile, resistant to fracture,
good conductors of heat and electricity, not transparent to visible light (ex:
iron, copper, gold, nickel, or alloys)
-ceramics: compounds between metallic and nonmetallic
elements, stiff and strong, hard and brittle, susceptible to fracture, insulators,
can be transparent, translucent, or opaque (ex: often oxides, nitrides,
carbides, such as Al2O3, SiC, or Si3N4)
-polymers: plastic and rubber materials, large molecular
structures that are often chainlike with a carbon backbone, low densities, less
stiff and strong but very ductile and pliable, low electrical conductivities
and nonmagnetic (ex: polyethylene, polystyrene, nylon)
-composites: composed or two or more materials that come
from the previous three categories, achieves a combination of desired
properties that is not present in any single material (ex: fiberglass)
-advanced materials: materials used in high tech
applications, such as semiconductors (materials with conductivities between
that of conductors and insulators), biomaterials (materials that are compatible
with body tissue), smart materials (materials that are responsive to their
environments), and nanomaterials (materials with structural features on the
order of a nanometer or less)
-general trends in the properties of these classes of materials at room temperature can be seen in the sketches below (refer to textbook for more quantitative comparisons):
This chapter was pretty simple, but stay tuned for Chapter 2: Atomic Structure and Interatomic Bonding!
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