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One of the most exciting and important topics for mechanical engineers, and one of the most useful outside of school when engineers actually have to build things out of….materials.
I think material science is one of the more exciting courses because materials are inherently interesting – we’re so close to them on a daily basis. Nearly everything we interact with is made of some material, and that material was probably chosen by someone who knows a bit about material science. Of course, this applies to engineering materials more than others. If you’re making some furniture, chances are you’ll use wood and not think much about it, apart from aesthetic decisions (which obviously is a part of material science, but maybe not a big one). But every material used in producing a car, or a plane, or a phone, or a robot, or a building, was chosen because (conceivably) it was the best material for that job. And to know what is the best material is for a certain application, it helps to know a bit about materials and material science.
If you are in mech eng, chances are you’ll be exposed to a material science class early in your education, maybe even first semester of first year. I’ve found, generally, that the material science courses are fairly intuitive, and not very math or theory intensive. But hopefully these chapters will make the concepts a little more interesting and approachable.
Chapter 1 will focus more on the nitty gritty details – smaller scale stuff as oppose to general material properties. But with Chapter 2, we’ll get into more detail about different materials and their properties – like composites and biomaterials (some stuff will be added).
the first year engineer 