Introductory Materials Science Research Articles

Animated concept-in-context maps as a materials science learning resource in an online flipped classroom.

The COVID-19 global pandemic has caused a profound change in the teaching pedagogies and assessment strategies in engineering curricula worldwide. Concerning this, the article examines the role of animation-enhanced concept-in-context maps as a learning resource for the introductory materials science course in an online flipped format. The research was conducted on second-year mechanical engineering undergraduates. The methodology used two-group quasi-experimental design where the experimental group received animated concept-in-context maps as a learning resource, in contrast to the control group, which obtained static concept-in-context maps. The student's understanding of the topic was evaluated from their performance in pre-quiz and post-quiz scores. The preliminary results of the pilot study turned out to be in favor of animation-assisted mapping; further research is in process, and in-depth experimentation has been planned.Graphic abstract

Student usage of short online single-topic videos in a first-year engineering chemistry class

This study explored students’ usage patternswith 5-10 minute single-topic (“short topic”) videosproduced solely for online use to support undergraduatestudents enrolled in a first-year introductory course toengineering chemistry and materials science at theUniversity of Toronto. The short topic videos were postedas unlisted YouTube videos and made available to studentsusing the Blackboard learning management system.Analytical data was collected from these unlisted YouTubevideos. In 2016, 142 student participants completed ananonymous survey that collected information on users’perceived usefulness and the reason for using the shorttopic videos. In the survey responses, 70.4% of studentsindicated a preference for using the short topic videos toreview specific content vs. full lecture captures. A total of76 short topic videos were created with an average videolength of 8:11 min. The videos were intentionally keptshort, with a maximum duration of 13:46 min. View counts and feedback from the survey responses suggested that students used the short topic videos to review contents and found the videos to be a valuable learning resource. The videos were re-used as the main learning content in the online equivalent course offered in 2017 and 2018. Datacollected from YouTube analytics demonstrated similarusage behavior and retention in the videos when used asthe main learning resource in the online courses to whenthe videos were provided as supplementary resources.

3D-Printing Crystallographic Unit Cells for Learning Materials Science and Engineering

Introductory materials science and engineering courses universally include the study of crystal structure and unit cells, which are by their nature highly visual 3D concepts. Traditionally, such topics are explored with 2D drawings or perhaps a limited set of difficult-to-construct 3D models. The rise of 3D printing, coupled with the wealth of freely available crystallographic data online, offers an elegant solution to materials science visualization problems. Here, we report a concise and up-to-date method to easily and rapidly transform actual crystallography files to 3D models of diverse unit cells for use as instructional aids.

The making of a science evangelist.

I have wanted to be a scientist ever since I was a little girl. I got the idea from a television program called 3-2-1 Contact , where I watched a young African-American girl solve problems. I saw my reflection in her and was transfixed. As time passed and my science career progressed, I saw that reflection less often. Now, years later, after a stint in industry and a negative tenure decision, I'm putting myself out there so that others can see their reflection in me. It's a precarious path, exposed and vulnerable, but so far the fruits of my journey have exceeded my fears. Great teachers nurtured my interest in science. There was Kathleen Donahue in fifth grade, who stoked my passion. There was Jean Howard, the unflappable high school physics teacher who urged me to apply to top colleges. ![Figure][1] “I saw my reflection in her and was transfixed.” ILLUSTRATION: ROBERT NEUBECKER At Brown University, there were Edelgard Morse, the chemistry professor who rescued me when my grades fell, and also Anne Fausto-Sterling—my learned mentor, professor, and North Star. With a strong sense of purpose, a hungry mind, and a willingness to work hard, I assumed my success was assured. It wasn't; I could easily have been one of the many nameless casualties science routinely sheds. Weary and battle worn, I made it through. I continued on to Stanford University to seek a Ph.D. As the only black student in the materials science department, I felt lonely and lost. But two good things happened there: I was awarded a AAAS Mass Media Fellowship and spent a summer writing for Time . (AAAS is the publisher of Science .) And I taught an introductory materials science class at a local community college. I was smitten with science communication. My students were smitten with science. I learned that I loved teaching science and that I have a talent for reaching apprehensive students. There was a third good thing: I finished my degree. I took a research position at Bell Labs. There, I was in constant contact with other minority scientists. I saw my reflection again. My creativity flourished. I was awarded a spot on MIT Technology Review 's Innovators Under 35 list. I wanted to stay forever, but the telecom bubble burst, and my job ended. So I landed in a tenure-track faculty position at Yale University. I established a well-funded lab, earned top teaching scores, and maintained a respected research program. I hosted a fun lecture series for kids called Science Saturdays . Children loved it and I did, too. In fact, I loved it more than I loved my research. Faculty life was not ideal—I could not see my reflection in my colleagues—but it was workable and I hoped to stay. Fate, and the tenure committee, had other plans. The denial of tenure thrusts you into a caste of the unclean. You're expected to pick up your book bag, your lumbar pillow, and your shredded dignity and sneak meekly out the back door. By the time I left, I was happy to go. My gut told me it could take no more, that academic science wasn't my path. I was ill, fatigued, and uninterested in climbing that ladder again. I used the tenure decision as an opportunity to explore afresh what I should do with my “one wild and precious life,” as Mary Oliver called it in her poem, The Summer Day . It was time for me to discover my true vocation, which Aristotle supposedly said could be found at the intersection of the world's needs and my passions. By now, I knew my passions well enough: science, teaching, sharing my love for science. So I looked at the world's needs and figured out my vocation. In the time I had left at Yale, I produced some science videos and posted them on YouTube. It felt good. Things opened up. TED invited me to give a talk. Dignitaries invited me to meetings. Random House published my book. I'm now happier and healthier. I'm following a path worn by Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Nye: lecturing, writing, and publicizing science. My new vocation offers less security than the old one did, but that seems fitting somehow. It's wilder and more precious. [1]: pending:yes

Effect of Student-Led Undergraduate Research Experience on Learning and Attitudes --A Practice in An Introductory Materials Science Course

ABSTRACTAn introductory materials science course has been traditionally taught at Texas A&M University - like at many other universities - through lectures with minimal active student involvement. With this approach, most students just reproduce what they are given and accept it without any challenge or question. The authors have redesigned this course to include an active learning component. While the course consists of lecture-based classes during regular teaching hours to keep the essence of traditional teaching, the authors incorporated a research experience to their class in order to engage students and encourage them to apply the content seen in class to real-word problems with a higher level of expertise. The aim of the study was to discover the effectiveness of the authors’ redesign. We hypothesized that the research experience would facilitate the learning of knowledge content and the enthusiasm for the chosen field of study, i. e. engineering. The results reveal that students in the experimental condition consistently show a greater gain in knowledge, but there is no sufficient evidence suggesting that the research experience increase the student’s enthusiasm to be an engineer.

Improving Materials Selection in a Mechanical Engineering Capstone Course

ABSTRACTThe Capstone Design course in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Northeastern University requires students to build a physical prototype by the end of the two semester sequence. Although students have long been required to take an introductory materials science course as part of their curriculum, there was concern that materials selection was a weakness in the design process. Beginning in Fall 2011, the CES Edupack materials selection software was introduced into the Capstone Design class. The current work means to investigate: 1) how to assess designs for effective materials selection 2) whether the new software was actually used by the student teams and 3) whether there was evidence of improved materials selection in the projects that occurred after the new software was introduced. Final capstone design reports from 10 previous terms were examined to look for evidence of systematic materials selection procedures and clear discussion of materials properties as the basis for selecting a material. References to the software were also noted. Results show that 24% of the groups used the CES Edupack software in the first three terms that the software was available. In addition, there was an increase in the number of groups that used a systematic selection process based on research into published materials properties rather than choosing materials based on rough experimentation or convenience. Finally, there has been an increase in the number of projects which consider or incorporate composites, high temperature alloys, and advanced polymers as the software has increased awareness of these options.

The Impacts of Societal Context on Student Motivation and Engagement

ABSTRACTPromoting a sense of societal connectedness is critical in today’s engineering educational environment. The NAE’s Grand Challenges for Engineering point to broad human concerns — sustainability, health, vulnerability, and joy of living — and human connectivity as the future of engineering problem solving. Engineering studies, however, are often presented in a completely decontextualized manner, with an emphasis on technical content that is free of any human meaning. As a result, students may have difficulty identifying either personal or societal value in their learning tasks. Through their course design, instructors can help students situate themselves and their engineering learning experiences within the larger human system. Studying technologies and technological development within the broader societal context may, in turn, offer significant benefits to student motivation and engagement in learning. In this paper, we report findings from a three-year investigation of the effects of disciplinary integration on student motivation and learning engagement in introductory materials science courses. The quantitative results show that integrating materials science with humanities provides for increased student motivation and cognitive engagement in learning. Compared to students in non-integrated project-based courses, students in integrated project-based courses show higher intrinsic motivation and task value. In addition to these motivational gains, students in the integrated materials science-history course report significantly higher use of critical thinking strategies in their project work, indicating that an emphasis on societal context may help students cognitively engage in their engineering studies. Our findings also indicate that women in the integrated materials-history course report higher intrinsic motivation, task value, self-efficacy, and critical thinking strategy use compared to women in the non-integrated materials course. Overall, our research suggests that putting human contexts at the center of engineering learning can help students build a sense of societal relatedness that promotes better learning.

Teaching, Learning, and Assessment Resources for Introductory Materials Science and Engineering Courses

ABSTRACTIn order to make innovative curriculum materials more accessible to instructors, a set of teaching, learning, and assessment resources have been created to implement more student-centered pedagogy for many topics in an introductory materials course. The resource development has been based on major principles for effective learning described in the book, How People Learn. The book states that, for more effective teaching and learning, instructors need pay attention to three major principles. One is that they should be aware of students’ prior knowledge and experience and misconceptions in order to inform classroom instruction and materials. As such, we have created tools to assess prior knowledge including the Materials Concept Inventory and Pre-Post Topical Concept Question Sets. Eliciting such information is critical in informing creation of innovative and misconception-informed teaching materials. A second principle is that instructors should create opportunities for student engagement with one another in order to promote conceptual change with deeper content understanding. This will help students build a conceptual framework that facilitates recall and transfer of concepts to new applications. As such, we have created visually-rich, contextualized content to promote student interest and link abstract concepts to concrete applications. The constructivist materials and activities that have been created include: Misconception-Informed Mini-Lecture Slide Sets, topical concept-context maps, a variety of classroom engagement activities, and homework that includes just-in-time preview problems to prepare students for the next class. A third principle is that instructors should promote student reflection so they become more metacognitive learners who can develop their own expertise by defining learning goals and monitoring their own progress. This need was addressed with a Daily Reflection Points sheet that requested students to write down their own class Points of Interest, Muddiness, and Learning. Most of these resources are available on the web at http://concept.asu.edu/. Assessment results showed significant gains on specific course topics using the innovative materials and an increase in persistence of students completing the class that rose from 85% to 95% compared with earlier lecture-based classes.

Sowing the seeds of scientific discovery: A celebration of David Pope, his legacy, and influence

Making waves in the surfboard industry is what Edison Conner fully intends to do with an advanced materials technology that he has been developing since an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). An avid surfer for most of his life, Conner, like many in the sport, was frustrated with the brittleness of standard boards built around a plastic foam core. Then, while taking an introductory materials science class with David Pope, professor and undergraduate chair of Penn’s Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Department, Conner realized that his desire for a better board could actually transform into a viable business opportunity. “The more I researched, the more convinced I was that I could leverage materials technologies to make a superior product,” he recalled. “The seed was planted in Dr. Pope’s class.” Pope, according to Conner, was instrumental in enabling him to grow and develop his dream “to create the world’s highest-performance surfboard” past the idea stage into a clearly articulated hypothesis for his senior thesis—and the basis for his current technology. Now president of Varial Surfing Technologies, Conner will be giving a talk on his surfboard solution at the David Pope Honorary Symposium on Fundamentals of Deformation and Fracture of Advanced Metals, taking place at the TMS 2011 Annual Meeting, February 27–March 3. “Dr. Pope is a remarkable man who has been a wonderful mentor to me. I am honored to be part of this celebration of his career,” said Conner. Conner’s deep regard for Dr. Pope is echoed by an array of MSE scientists and engineers who will be presenting at the symposium. “David certainly belongs to a small number of materials scientists who had a seminal and lasting impact on our understanding of mechanical behavior of various metallic materials,” said Vasek Vitek, a fellow professor at Penn and long-time collaborator of Pope’s. “Our collaboration was characterized by a close link between experiment and theory. David, being an excellent experimentalist, put us theorists on the realistic path. He both initiated theoretical analyses needed to explain or interpret experimental observations and developed experiments to prove or disprove theories. Such a link between experiments and theory develops rarely and David was unique in his full understanding of the theory and ability to develop a truly relevant experimental program.” Much of Pope’s greatest work, however, is not confined to the laboratory, Vitek continued: “He has also contributed immensely to the field by teaching the most introductory courses and attracting students—who really love him—to materials science. Before meeting David, many of them did not even know that this field of study and research existed.” According to Easo George, distinguished research and development staff at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), symposium organizer, and a former graduate student of Pope’s, it was how his professor presented concepts as much as what he covered that made a lasting impression. “In his classes, Dave had an uncanny ability to explain scientific concepts using everyday examples that made the material coherent and easy to understand, without sacrificing rigor, and it stayed with us permanently,” he said. “A vivid recollection I have is his use of the texture of ice cream—which he described as a two-phase mixture of ice crystals and cholesterol—to bring to life Ostwald ripening in the freezer.” Admitting to being “a little embarrassed by the attention,” Pope said he is nonetheless delighted at the prospect of seeing many colleagues whom he has touched—personally and scientifically—at his honorary symposium in February. “I have truly enjoyed, even cherished, my professional friends from all around the world, and am flattered that they are willing to honor me like this,” he said.

Bond-Energy and Surface-Energy Calculations in Metals

A simple technique appropriate for introductory materials science courses is outlined for the calculation of bond energies in metals from lattice energies. The approach is applied to body-centered cubic (bcc), face-centered cubic (fcc), and hexagonal-closest-packed (hcp) metals. The strength of these bonds is tabulated for a variety metals and is seen to be somewhat smaller than those typically found for the covalent bonds in molecular substances or polymers. The calculated bond energies are then combined with experimental lattice constants to illustrate the estimation of the surface energy of metals with these three crystal structures. The agreement with experiment is reasonably good, given the difficulties inherent in measuring the surface tension of metals and the considerable extrapolation required for surface-energy calculation.

The Molecule, The Monomer and Materials Science: A Preliminary Report

AbstractThere would appear to be a large disconnect between the content of a typical high school chemistry course, and an introductory, college materials science course. For example, A National Science Foundation report notes that,“the historic bias of chemistry curricula towards small molecule chemistry, generally in the gaseous and liquid states, is out of touch with current opportunities for chemists in research, education and technology”.In contrast, the typical introductory college materials science course concentrates almost exclusively on the solid state, and a discussion of “small molecular” materials is virtually absent.In the present contribution, it will be shown how the “molecule” forms part of a hierarchical series of structures, from the sub-atomic to the macroscopic. It will also be argued that the molecule is but a sub-set of a localized grouping of atoms, which is best described by the term “monomer”.Based on a strict definition of the molecule and monomer, a complete hierarchical scheme for the structure of materials is developed, which should be applicable to both a high school chemistry course, and an introductory materials science course.

The Design, Implementation and Assessment of an On-Line, Open-Book Quizzing Environment for an Introductory Materials Science Course.

AbstractThe authors have developed, implemented and assessed an on-line, open-book quizzing environment for the introductory materials science course, “Materials In Today’s World”. The course is offered as an E-Education course and students may complete the course from anywhere that permits access to our course management system, ANGEL. For reasons that were both pragmatic and philosophical, we decided that the exams/quizzes would not be proctored, they would be delivered wholly on-line, and would be open-book.In the current paper, we will present and justify our philosophy, of on-line, open-book quizzes: the rich feedback, which is a feature or our quizzing system, QuestionMark Perception, is used both as a teaching tool, and as a means to refine the quiz database. We have replaced the original “high-stakes” midterm and final exam, with a series of lower-stakes, weekly quizzes, which are generated from a large question database. Student response to the quizzing environment is generally very positive.

Non-Traditional Assessments for New Learning Approaches: Competency Evaluation in Project-Based Introductory Materials Science

AbstractOver the last twenty years, NSF and the engineering community have called for systemic changes in engineering education, including an emphasis on contextual understanding; increased teaming skills, including collaborative, active learning; and an improved capacity for life-long, self-directed learning. In addition, ABET has called for engineering graduates that demonstrate an ability to apply science and engineering, and ABET requires assessment processes designed to measure student achievement of learning outcomes. Olin College has responded to these calls for change by embracing new learning approaches and assessment techniques, and by developing project-based courses that encourage experiential understanding of content and aid the development of life-long learning skills. To address the assessment needs of new pedagogical approaches, Olin recently instituted a competency based assessment system to accompany the traditional course grading system already in place. The thread of competency assessments provides grading coherency for both faculty and students, and it provides students with valuable information concerning their development of nontraditional skills that they could use to identify shortcomings and further their learning. In this paper, we describe the new pedagogical approaches in Olin's introductory materials science course, and we explain our implementation of the competency assessment system to measure student attainment of both materials science knowledge and broader skills such as teaming, communication, and experimental inquiry.

Goniometry of Direct Lattice Vectors Supporting Students' Comprehension of Crystallographic Core Concepts and Demonstrating Image-Based Nanocrystallography

AbstractWe are of the opinion that students of an introductory materials science and engineering course should gain a thorough understanding of crystallographic core concepts by applying them quasi-experimentally in computer simulation sessions that run parallel to the lectures. Software simulations of goniometry of direct lattice vectors in a transmission electron microscope (TEM) will serve two purposes at once: to introduce students to practical aspects of electron microscopy and support their comprehension of crystallographic core concepts. We use the programming software Matlab and Java (Jmol applets) on a PC platform for the creation of software simulations that demonstrate this methodology and complement already existing software simulations. The newly created software is used in classroom demonstrations of an introductory materials science and engineering course at Portland State University and will become freely accessible over the internet. This software will also support and promote image-based nanocrystallography in TEM.

Implementation of Paul Revere: Tough as Nails, an Integrated Project-Based Course on Materials Science and History of Technology

AbstractOlin College sophomores participate in integrated course blocks that merge technical content with business, arts, humanities, and social science topics, allowing students to work on engineering projects that have broader implications than the purely technical. In this paper, we present Paul Revere: Tough as Nails, a multidisciplinary course block that combines an introductory materials science course with a history of technology course and a large scale project. In Paul Revere, students explore connections between historical and technological materials science developments through examinations of Paul Revere's metallurgical work and analyses of the relevant social, environmental, political, and economic aspects that contribute to ancient and modern technologies. The explicit linkages among technical, non-technical, and hands-on aspects of the course improve learning of traditional topics, help drive interdisciplinary thinking, and lead to a high level of student satisfaction and motivation throughout the semester.

Managing Student Group Projects in an Introductory Materials Science Course

ABSTRACTIn an introductory materials science course for mechanical and industrial engineering sophomores, a term-long student team project is included as a graded activity. Successful completion of the project fulfills three course objectives where students learn 1) to compose professional reports in teams and demonstrate effective communication skills, 2) to apply introductory concepts of materials science well enough to follow technical articles on various topics, and 3) to locate resources to gather additional information related to a topic. To help students learn to research a topic, to write, to work in teams, and to speak publicly, the course includes guest lectures with various instructors with expertise in library research skills, technical writing, and communication studies. Course assessment indicates that sophomores find their projects interesting and they report learning a lot about the topics they selected. Interventions in the early stages of the curriculum allow the students to perform better during their senior year Capstone Design Project. The details of how the projects are managed will be described.

A Multi-functional Introductory Materials Science Course: Emphasizing Engineering and Achieving Accreditation Objectives

ABSTRACTIn efforts to serve more engineering students and to achieve accreditation objectives, we have redesigned our introductory materials course to be more engineering-oriented and relevant to other disciplines. The fundamental materials science concepts have been regrouped into five, 2-week sections that emphasize applications: Materials Basics; Mechanical Strength; Thermo-mechanical Treatments; Electrical Properties; and Economic, Environmental and Societal Issues. Although the topics that are covered are similar to those in most introductory materials science courses, the presentation of the topics has been re-arranged to create clearer links between materials science and materials engineering. We have also identified accreditation criteria within each section and have built in mechanisms for providing feedback for accreditation processes. In addition, learning objectives for each section ensure standardization among different sections and instructors. Results on students' performances are reported.

The Introductory Materials Science and Engineering Course

ABSTRACTThe introductory materials science and engineering course offered at the college/university level is, for many instructors, very difficult to design and to teach. This presentation discusses challenges for the course, as well as several problematic issues to include: course content, course organization, and course mechanics. The results of two surveys of engineering faculty are presented and discussed; these provide perspectives and lead to suggestions on how to manage these troublesome areas, and improve the quality of and student satisfaction in this course. Also discussed are commercially available software packages, and, in addition, a hybrid electronic-paper introductory materials textbook.

A Comparative Assessment of Students'Experiences in Two Instructional Formats of an Introductory Materials Science Course

AbstractAn educational experiment at Worcester Polytechnic Institute is described in which the instruction of the Introduction to Materials Science course (ES2001) was modified to incorporate active and cooperative learning. The overall goal was simultaneously to enhance educational quality and faculty productivity. Aspects of the course modification included use of “active” rather than traditional lectures, assignment of students to cooperative learning teams, introduction of a “product dissection project,” and a “teacher as manager” approach to instruction, in which undergraduate Peer Learning Assistants and the graduate Teaching Assistant took on responsibilities as part of the instructional team. Data were gathered from 382 students in three traditional course offerings and two active/cooperative offerings, using various survey instruments to measure students' learning and performance, attitudes about learning, interest in materials science, and their satisfaction with the course.

Electron Beam Welding

M J Fletcher London: Mills and Boon 1971 pp 56 price £1.50 The author has had considerable experience at the applications end of this subject and writes with authority on the design of components for electron beam welding and on the metallurgical properties of the resulting welds. His book gives a broad introduction to the topic, without getting bogged down in the details, and could be understood by a first or second year student with an introductory materials science course behind him.