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The Undergraduate Physics and Materials Science Connection

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 November 2013

D.F. Holcomb
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Materials science is fundamentally an interdisciplinary field. For purposes of discussing undergraduate preparation for work in materials science, I think it useful to take chemistry, physics, and materials science and engineering as three more-or-less separate disciplines which combine to form the overall field of materials science. The primary reason for this particular taxonomy is pragmatic rather than philosophical. Undergraduate students choose major fields of study on the basis of disciplinary boundaries. Thus, in thinking about undergraduate preparation for work in the overall field, analysis of the present situation and/or recommendations for change must revolve around that reality.

The recent report entitled Materials Science and Engineering for the 1990s (the MS&E Study), sets forth the four elements of materials science and engineering as “structure and composition, properties, performance, and synthesis and processing.” An examination of these specific elements permits us to make useful distinctions among the three disciplines that combine to form the field of materials science. For example, while input from the point of view of physics certainly can contribute rather directly to expansion of our knowledge in the first three areas, its possible contribution to the last is, at best, indirect. To somewhat belabor the point, the research field of condensed matter physics is certainly contained within the field of materials but arguably not part of the discipline of materials science and engineering.

The MS&E Study includes a chapter entitled “Manpower and Education in Materials Science and Engineering.” Within that chapter is a section called “Undergraduate Education in Materials Science and Engineering.”

Type
Materials Education
Information
MRS Bulletin , Volume 15 , Issue 8 , August 1990 , pp. 37 - 39
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1990

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References

1.Materials Science and Engineering for the 1990s: Maintaining Competitiveness in the Age of Materials (National Academy Press, Washington, DC, 1989).Google Scholar
2.Proceedings of the International Conference on Teaching Modern Physics—Condensed Matter University of Munich, September 12-16, 1988 (World Scientific Publishing Co., Teaneck, NJ, 1989.)Google Scholar
3. “Condensed Matter Physics: A Collection of published papers from The American Journal of Physics and The European Journal of Physics,” by E. Leonard Jossem, Ohio State University, presented at the 1988 Munich conference on Teaching Modern Physics—Condensed Matter, but not reproduced in the proceedings.Google Scholar
4. The Introductory University Physics Project is sponsored by the American Association of Physics Teachers, the American Institute of Physics, and the American Physical Society. It has been supported by a grant from the Office of Undergraduate Science and Mathematics Education of the National Science Foundation. Information about the project may be obtained from the director, Dr. John H. Rigden, American Institute of Physics, 335 E. 45th St., New York, NY 10017.Google Scholar
5. See, for example, the article by Herbert Johnson, H., MRS Bulletin XII (4) (1987) p. 40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar