Introduction and Outline

Materials are all around us—they comprise essentially everything in existence. Materials have played a critical role in technological advancement since the dawn of humanity, and new materials developed and designed by materials scientists and engineers enable technologies that support civilization itself.

In this chapter we'll introduce what Materials Science and Engineering is, and how we distinguish it from other closely related scientific fields like physics and chemistry or engineering disciplines like mechanical or chemical engineering.

Outline

  • Section 1.3- History of Materials: A broad historical overview of the role materials have played in the advancement of civilization.
  • Section 1.4 - The MSE Paradigm - Defining the Discipline: A more precise definition of what a material is, how Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) is distinct from (and complementary to) other fields, and what materials scientists and engineers do. The definition of the field is anchored in the MSE Paradigm, which describes the relationship between materials processing, structure, properties, and performance.
  • Section 1.5 - The MSE Paradigm as a Systematic Framework for Science and Engineering: Materials scientists and engineers use the paradigm as a framework to explore the science of materials as well as leverage our scientific understanding to engineer materials.
  • Section 1.6- The Role of Materials Science and Engineering in Technology: A closer look at how researchers and engineers leverage the principles of MSE to advance current technology. A discussion of how materials scientists and engineers interface with other engineers.
  • Section 1.7 - The Taxonomy of Materials: The basic classification scheme by which different materials are classified. Here, we'll introduce the highest level of the categorization hierarchy: metals, ceramics, polymers, molecular solids, and composites.

Outcomes

By the end of this module, we want students to be able to, in broad terms:

  1. Describe and assess the role of Materials Science and Engineering in society and various engineering disciplines.
  2. Compare the materials scientists and engineers and differentiate their roles in the discipline.
  3. Understand the structure, role, limitations, and underlying philosophy of the MSE Paradigm and how it is used.
  4. Evaluate materials applications (i.e., material summaries) into processing, structure, properties, and performance.
  5. Compare and contrast general properties and applications of traditional materials classes.
  6. Understand the reason for the emergence of "new" or "advanced" materials classes and their relation to traditional classes.
  7. Analyze various materials’ chemical formulas and other characteristics and then categorize materials into traditional classes (more on this in later chapters).