Biochem fag here, but I've been interested in materials science for a while. Finding recommendations for texts on Veeky Forums for things like math and physics is pretty easy, but in my experience people rarely talk about matsci.
What are your guys' experience with matsci and p-chem? Know of any particularly good sources to learn more/textbooks that provide good explanation for someone with physics and chemistry knowledge?
What are you looking for exactly? I'm a Chem student and I've been learning about polymers and metals/corrosion lately, nothing too deep though obviously
I'm just fascinated in what factors are used in determining what materials to use when building/manufacturing, as well as the actual production of materials themselves.
Alloys specifically are mysterious to me, because it seems difficult for me to tell from a glance what mixture of metal would produce the type of strength/flexibility that would be required for a certain use. I know there are various tables that can be used with values of how brittle a material is, how much force it can withstand, etc. but I'm more interested in why that's the case.
Materials Science is a very, very broad field. For starters, you can look into crystallography and defects - that alone covers a lot of ground regarding alloys and their characteristics. If you're more interested in optics and electrical applications, you can delve into solid state physics. Then there's polymers, too, and composites...
I wouldn't recommend any specific book, because none covers all aspects well enough. Browse some university homepages - many of them have lots of teaching materials open to the public.
Thanks for the suggestions, I'll look into them.
Do you have any experience in materials science?
PhD in mat. chem. here, I think you're looking too broadly. A materials chemist will care about what they can do synthetically to create "desirable" (whatever the fuck that means to the PI/researcher) from an atomic scale, e.g. how can i make more monodisperse samples, how can i get certain types of crystal packing. A materials physicist (also often called solid state physics) will worry about (most often) electronic structure, responses and interactions with light/magentic field/other matter. A materials engineer will do nothing but twiddle their thumbs until someone gives them something, and then they will still do nothing, except probably be a further suck on society
Yeah, I'm looking broadly because I'm not quite sure what all's out there in terms of the study of materials, physically and chemically. Going the biochemistry route, I feel like one of the things I know tangentially, but would like to know more about is macroscopic effects of electron orbital sharing, crystal structure, etc. Kind of a bummer there aren't any good 'overview' texts that go into how we study, classify, and produce material, but you've given me a couple of good things to look into.
I've heard the same thing from others about materials engineers though, what's wrong with them?
BSc and MSc in Materials Science and Engineering
I'm going to be a 4th year undergrad next year majoring in chemistry and with a mat sci focus, so basically a normal chem degree with some materials classes thrown in for fun. MSE is underrated imo, since half of the chem undergrads are premed and then the other ones are biochem. There's only one other person in my class also taking MSE classes. Lab work is also way cooler imo since I get to do SEM and XRD.
PChem has been my favorite chem class so far and MSE has a lot of cool crossover (crystallography, chemical bonds, stat mech, thermo and kinetics). I recommend McQuarrie & Simon for PChem; my favorite text I've used for a course. Shackleford and/or Callister are good introductions to materials.
Avoid Shackleford. Callister is the best. Carter & Norton, or Richerson, is good for ceramics. Shelby or Varshneya is good for glass. Lines & Glass is good for electrical materials. I'd recommend looking for course syllabi at a good MSE/MME university and seeing what books they'd require/recommend. Try to avoid a metallurgy or metals-heavy program unless that's really what you want to do. A good mat sci program should cover metals and ceramics in depth, and glass, polymers, and composites a little bit.