Talk:Materials science

Page Problems

This page is in bad need of editing. The structure of the writing as well as the content of the article are lacking. I hope that others will aid me in repairing this summary of a tremendous field. -Morgan

I'd like to help edit though I am rather new to doing any massive editting to wikipedia articles. Perhaps we could start by dividing the long introduction into something more brief and moving the majority of the text below the table of contents. The writing style used here could also use some work and if you'd like I could try to improve the flow. I am tentative to do any major editting on my own though. -Stardust8212

Just jump in; Be bold; it can always be rolled back to a version in the history. Tom Harrison ^Talk 15:29, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll try to be bold, very slowly. I don't have the energy for extensive grammar editting at the moment but I think just changing to have an actual lead section will help to make the article look better in general. I will try to go through the text over the weekend and make it fit more closely and flow better.

To be honest this page doesn't seem too bad. The long 'history and techniques' section could be chopped into 'history' 'aims' and 'techniques', and maybe a section dealing with non-crystalline materials? Crystals and defects account for a vast amount of the field, sure, but the crystallinity and thus the effect of defects in polymers is a (very) complex issue and there are amorphous materials, such as glass, all over the place. Trent 900 14:21, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the section could be divided up, I wasn't sure exactly how to divide it though, I was just happy that it looked better than when I started! If you want to divide those sections go ahead, if the paragraphs look a little short we might need to add a bit more info. How do we know when it's good enough to take the editting tag off? Stardust8212 15:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I've taken the plunge and broken up the big section. Afraid I edited out rather a lot of it. I think it's best not to use specific examples; much as it would be nice to talk about precipitation hardening of aluminium, there's not much point unless you're going to explain dislocation mechanics and that's not a topic for this page. I don't feel experienced enough to remove an editing tag! Trent 900 18:38, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to put up a request for a page(that this page links to) that attempts to create a comprehensive list of materials properties: physical, mechanical, electrical, magnetic, optical, thermal, whatever just so that there exists a thorough list to refer to when you want to know what sort of things there might be to know about a material.

Chemistry?

I don't know if this is the right place to say this, but it strikes me as odd that Materials Science is treated as a subsection of chemistry. If it's a subsection of anything it's got rather more in common with physics, in my opinion, but in reality it's too multidisciplinary to categorise like this. Trent 900 09:46, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I am of the same imrpression. I think Materials Science is closer to Physics. The category makes it look as if Materials Science is a subsection of Chemistry... - Cribananda 01:24, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

So should we just remove the chemistry info box from the bottom? Other suggestions? Stardust8212 03:30, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd rather not take away the chemistry box. We could add a physics box, or make and add a materials science box, or a multi-disciplinary box. Tom Harrison ^Talk 13:09, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Isn't Chemistry a subsection of Physics? ;-) Murray.booth 13:02, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Hooke's law

i'm in the faculty of eng. in egypt portsaid and i wonder about some questions about hooke's law and how 2 prove it in lab.in the us and uk faculties of eng.

Hooke's law is a lot like Moore's law or Ohm's law: it's empirical, and there are a lot of exceptions to the rule, so it can't really be "proven"--in fact, it's quite easy to disprove, using a rubber band (as a diode disproves ohm's law). That said, I would recommend having your students buld and calibrate weighing scales. In the calibration step, the deflection can be recorded under several known loading conditions, and the resulting deflection vs. load curve should be very nearly linear. Plus in the end, they'll have a useful tool of known precision. The best way to show the law's generality is to give them springs with widely varying stiffness, in all varieties (see spring (device) for a fairly complete list). This also has the advantage that a wide variety masses can then be assessed by the resulting range of scales. For a more demonstration-style proof, you could suspend heavy weights by a long, thin wire and show the students its linear length increase, or use an Instron or other tensile machine to test a wide range of materials. Hope this helps. --Joel 08:35, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC) (by the way, you can sign your posts using tilde characters (~), three or four in a row.)

Semiconductors are basically cermaics?!?!?!?

I am new to Materials Science, but thus far my impression is that the the study of semiconductors is a seperate sub-field from the study of ceramics. For example, at my university, students may list topics for their PhD qualifier in order of preference, and electronic materials (i.e. semiconductors) are a seperate topic. I would appreciate it if someone with more knowledge could confirm this, and make the appropriate changes.

Also, I simply cannot believe that under ceramics there is no mention of ferroelectrics and ferromagnetics.... (again, I would appreciate it if the hypothetical "person who knows more than me" would recitify this omission :) )

On the other hand, I'm quite impressed that you have the Materials tetrahedron rather than the Materials triangle :D--Conwiktion 05:29, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

re semiconductors are defined by thier electrical properties not by the elements used. semiconductivity can occur in metals, semimetals, ceramics and polymers.

characterization

Obviously, the link in this article to characterization is not appropriate, because the article titled characterization is, as one would of course expect, not about the topic called "characterization" here. Michael Hardy 03:14, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks; I've changed the link to Characterization (materials science). Tom Harrison ^(talk) 03:33, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

An increasingly exhaustive list

Unless someone can come up with a reasonable criteris for inclusion, I'm going to delete the "non-exhaustive list of some materials science research institutions and facilities." Tom Harrison ^Talk 15:30, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree--most other articles on disciplines certainly don't seem to have a similar list. I think it can be cut completely. If people don't want it cut, I think it should at least be spun off to a new article (something like List of Materials Science Institutions and Facilities). -- Karnesky 17:38, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree too - and must partially take the blame for adding to the list. I have no issues with simply cutting it out. Most universities with science and engineering departments do materials science research. Cribananda 18:08, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Good point re. the universities, but that makes me think the government lab and corporate sections could potentially be useful. -- Karnesky 18:44, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Please, go ahaed. There is no way for the list to be complete. — orioneight (talk) 00:19, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

I've retained the government and coprorate labs, per Karnesky's comment. Tom Harrison ^Talk 15:24, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Cut corporate? Pretty much any largish medium- to high-tech industrial company does materials research. I mean, all the aerospace companies, power plant companies, nuclear companies, raw metal companies, automotive companies...etc. etc. Were this list exhaustive it would be prohibitively long and as it is it seems so incomplete as to be pointless. Actual government labs are far less common/predictable and are worthy of documentation here, by contrast. Trent 900 14:28, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, unless a corporation does only materials research I doubt it is significant Stardust8212 15:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the corporate list will attract a lot of additions the way the Univesity section did. The number of "largish" corporations doing substantial amounts of fundamental materials research is not too large. That being said, most nat. labs also do materials research of one type or another. In other words, kill the list entirely or leave it as is--no reason to only pare it down. --Karnesky 20:21, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

This list is highly US-centric. Either include research centres around the world as well or cut it altogether.

- J Elliott

Bibliography

I think a well-chosen list of print references can add a lot to our articles. I added a few references to Eutectic point#Bibliography using the book cite template. I thought it might be useful to do something similar on this page. I wonder if people would like to add the references they have found most useful? I think a range of levels would be good, from something accessible to a motivated high school student, to undergraduate survey texts, up to graduate level, though I suppose we want to put the more specialized works in different articles. Either add them to the page, or list them here and I'll add them later.

good idea, I think the best books for an introduction to the subject are:

• J E Gordon 'The New Science of Strong Materials or Why You Don't Fall Through the Floor', Princeton University Press, ISBN 0691023808, Reissued 1984
• J E Gordon 'Structures: or Why Things Don't Fall Down', Da Capo Press, ISBN 0306812835, Reprinted 2003 Trent 900 10:41, 30 April 2006 (UTC)