Abstract of Material Science course

The combination of physics, chemistry and focus on the relationship between the properties of a material and its microstructure is the domain of the Science of Materials.

Manufacturing is concerned with making products. A manufactured product may itself be used to make other products, such as

• (a) a large press, to shape flat sheetmetal into automobile bodies,
• (b) a drill, for producing holes,
• (c) industrial sawing machines,for making clothing at high rates, and
• (d) numerous pieces of machinery, to produce an endless variety of individual items, ranging from thin wire for guitars and electric motors to crankshafts and connecting rods for automotive engines.

Components in Products

• Some products are a single components (nail, bolt, fork, coat hanger, etc.)
• Some products are assemblies of many components (ball point pens, automobiles, washing machines, etc.)
• All components are manufactured. “Made by Hand”.

Materials can be natural, i.e. wood, diamond, etc. or human-made, i.e. steel, bronze, etc. At the moment, about 300,000 different materials can be counted. The majority of those fall into several broad general categories.

Metals. All periods of human civilization carried out the names of metals, for example, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, etc.Those were the first materials to be ‘engineered’: people changed them to meet their needs.

Ceramics. A teapot from China is one of the types of ceramics that can also be used for creating bone replacements, super-strong cutting tools or conducting electricity.

Semiconductors mean a material that can conduct electricity with the help of added ‘impurities’. One of such materials –silicon –is the essential material used for producing electronic computer chips.

Polymers are very big molecules made of smaller molecules and linked together into long repeating chains.

Composites are the combinations of materials that can be as simple as concrete reinforced with steel bars, leading edge or an ultra light carbon-fiber bicycle. A combination of different materials often produces new properties that are radically different and better than those of any single material.