Materials Engineering

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Is anyone familiar with this? has anyone taken courses in it?

Well, I'm a Chemical Engineer with a specialty in polymers, so I have some experience in it (I've taken both the Polymers course here and TAed for it, and I'm the current Polymer Characterization Lab manager). I've always favored it because it has a lot to do with understanding the physical aspects of how materials interact with itself and other materials.

cool
tell me a bit more about it. oh and does it have more to do with general understandings, like you said, of how materials interact, or does it require more memorization of the names of materials and such? i was looking at a website about polymers, and they all have crazy names XD are you expected to memorise all of those 100%?

Well, with Polymer engineering, and quite a lot of Materials engineering I'd imagine, you do need to know some basic chemistry to understand specific composition (especially if you have to figure out what the hell a material's made out of with reverse engineering), but that isn't so important as learning the physical characteristics of the materials and why they're that way. Like with polymers, you need to know the different types of fluids (non-Newtonian vs. Newtonian), how the length of polymer chains cause certain phenomenon (entanglement, extruder swell, etc.), the difference between Amorphous and Semicrystalline, and so on. So it's minimal memorization of basic facts (like with Biology), and mostly about understanding how the properties of a material effect things, and why the properties are what they are.

If you're interested in some of the things I do in my lab, most of the business we get is through people using our DSC (differential scanning calorimetry) and TGA (thermogravimetric analysis) machines to determine the properties of their samples. Wikipedia has articles that cover both of these pretty extensively.

Also, you aren't really expected to memorize all of the properties of various things. There's a reason why we have a chart of the different melting points, crystallinity peaks and glass transition phases for a bunch of different polymers right next to the machines. Sure, after a few decades in the field, you'll probably have things memorized pretty damn well, but you education's also a lot to do with learning where to find the information you need.

okay, cool. . thanks for the responses.

I'm sure there's even programs that do it. One cute one I had long ago was the Periodic Table, with a temperature dial, and you could see what was solid, liquid, or gas, depending on the temperature...

that's cool! i think i'm going to look for it. XD

If I wanted a Rapier whose blade would telescope out and retract like that of a Jedi light saber, What materials would I need?

Bear in mind it must be able to cut and stab. It would most likely be a wire like blade made out of some kind of alloy, or possibly plastic.

Unicorn's blood and an array of nanoscale ferrous magnets.

where the blade curls up like a tape measure being retracted, so it would also have to curve.

the hum of a Jedi lightsaber is unacceptable, electrical energy would be necessary for the nano-particles, that could potentially give off an electric humming noise.

what would iron nanoparticles do to enhance sharpness?

interestingly enough silver sulfide also tin form whiskers