Why do we study materials? Materials are probably more deep seated in our culture than most of us realize. Historically, the development and advancement of societies have been intimately tied to the members’ ability to produce and manipulate materials to fill their needs. An advancement in the understanding of a material is often the forerunner to the stepwise progression of a technology. Many times, a materials problem is one of selecting the right material from the thousands available.

Strictly speaking, materials science involves investigating the relationships that exist between the structures and properties of materials. In contrast, materials engineering involves, on the basis of these structure–property correlations, designing or engineering the structure of a material to produce a predetermined set of properties. Throughout this course, we draw attention to the relationships among these four components: processing, structure, properties, and performance in terms of the design, production, and utilization of materials. We will mainly focus on steels.

The primary objective is to understand the basic fundamentals of materials science and engineering. After study this course, students will find materials science is very useful very interesting, and more importantly, you can recognize that many of today’s technological marvels depend on the availability of materials and you will be more motivated and remain interested in how to apply the essentials of materials science and engineering. 

The more familiar an engineer or scientist is with the various characteristics and structure–property relationships, as well as the processing techniques of materials, the more proficient and confident he or she will be in making judicious materials choices based on these criteria.

大学物理、大学化学、高等数学、材料科学基础

Textbooks: Essentials of materials science and Engineering (Donald R. Askeland) 清华大学出版社（Tsinghua University Press），影印版 References: Fundamentals of Materials Science and Engineering，Fifth Edition, 化学工业出版社（Chemical Industry Press ），影印版