Materials and Their Properties
Choosing the material is half the design. A brilliant shape made from the wrong stuff will still bend, snap, rust, or cost too much. In this lesson you learn to read a material the way an engineer does — by its properties — and to pick the right one on purpose, not by luck.
What you will be able to do
- Name and explain the key properties of a material: strength, stiffness, hardness, toughness, brittleness, density, ductility, corrosion resistance and conductivity.
- Tell strength apart from stiffness — the single most confused pair in materials.
- Recognise the big material families (metals, polymers, ceramics, composites, wood) and what each is good and bad at.
- Explain why reinforced concrete works so well.
- Use a decision matrix to choose a material on purpose, scoring real options against real needs.
- Read a stress–strain curve and point to strength and stiffness on it.