Hand-thrown Pottery by Emily Asenath-Smith, PhD
What are materials? All the stuff around us! The main categories of materials are metals, ceramics, polymers, but there are also composites, bio-materials, and indigenous materials, like wood and snow.
What is material science? It is a highly interdisciplinary scientific field that studies the interrelated structure-property-processing relationships in materials. The fundamental principle of materials science is how materials are processed affects their structure, and the structure of materials affects their properties. The properties of interest may be chemical, mechanical, thermal, optical, magnetic, and electrical, therefore materials science addresses activities and concepts from the fields of chemistry, biology, geology, and physics, as well as mechanical, electrical, environmental and civil engineering.