Introduction to Materials Science for Engineers (5th Edition)

Rating:
Summary: Chapter 15
Review: Chapter 15 of "Materials Science for Engineers" describes the physical properties of electrical behavior. This chapter does a good job of explaining the properties of conduction and resistance. It also explains why metals are good conductors and what actually happens in a semiconductor material. This textbook is good as a prerequisite text before starting the core studies in electrical engineering. It provides a good background to the phenomena of electrical behavior at the atomic level.

This chapter, as well as the other chapters involving electricity, deal with material properties and not the physics of electricity.

This chapter hints at the property of superconductivity. I still don't fully comprehend this topic after reading chapter 15, but there are numerous publications written about this concept alone.

Rating:
Summary: Chapter 15
Review: Chapter 15 of "Materials Science for Engineers" describes the physical properties of electrical behavior. This chapter does a good job of explaining the properties of conduction and resistance. It also explains why metals are good conductors and what actually happens in a semiconductor material. This textbook is good as a prerequisite text before starting the core studies in electrical engineering. It provides a good background to the phenomena of electrical behavior at the atomic level.

This chapter, as well as the other chapters involving electricity, deal with material properties and not the physics of electricity.

This chapter hints at the property of superconductivity. I still don't fully comprehend this topic after reading chapter 15, but there are numerous publications written about this concept alone.

Rating:
Summary: Chapter 2 Review
Review: Chapter 2 does a good job of describing the fundamentals of atomic bonding. The chapter starts out by reviewing the basic structure of the atom being the nucleus and the electrons. The nucleus is the center of the atom that is made up of protons and neutrons while the electrons are contained in the surrounding "shells" or orbitals. Throughout the beginning they explain the differences between the two types of bonding that can occur between atoms, the preliminary and the secondary bonding. They include the ionic, covalent, metallic, and the Van der Waals bonds. There are a few ideas that are mentioned for a reminder such as the mass of the proton and neutron, electron and Avagadro's number, which represents the number of protons necessary to provide a mass of 1 gram. There is an explanation of the orbital system and hybridization and a brief description of the different bonds mentioned in the preliminary and secondary bonding. Not only does the author describe the basics of the bond it does a good job of determining the origin of the bond, such as the ionic bond being the result of the Coulombic attraction. As a result of the easily understood explanations, they do supply brief definitions of the bond length, repulsive force, bonding force and bonding energy. Another topic that is touched on is the idea of the coordination number (CN) which depends on the ion properties. Following the CN, a definition of the different properties of the bonds and electrons and bond angles is thoroughly explained. Another thorough explanation is provided for the "Van der Waals" bonding, which is the attraction of opposite charges while there is no actual electron exchange. There are two types being permanent and temporary. I would recommend this book for a thorough explanation of the atomic structure.

Rating:
Summary: Chapter 3
Review: Chapter 3, being the 2nd longest chapter, is full of plenty of valuable information. It is by no means a recreational reading material due to the wordy nature of the text. However, studied closely there is a bountiful amount of information on metal, ceramics and plastics at the atomic level. The author does a good job explaining the introductory material and could possible write another book entirely on this subject. Due to the wordy, technical nature, I will refrain from giving "two thumbs up" and only give 4 stars.

Rating:
Summary: Chapter 3
Review: Chapter 3, being the 2nd longest chapter, is full of plenty of valuable information. It is by no means a recreational reading material due to the wordy nature of the text. However, studied closely there is a bountiful amount of information on metal, ceramics and plastics at the atomic level. The author does a good job explaining the introductory material and could possible write another book entirely on this subject. Due to the wordy, technical nature, I will refrain from giving "two thumbs up" and only give 4 stars.

Rating:
Summary: A decent book, Ch6 for example
Review: Chapter 6 covers the topic of Mechanical Behavior in 6 sub-sections. These sections include the stress versus strain relationship (a.k.a. Young's Modulus), elastic and plastic deformation, hardness, creep and stress relaxation, and viscoelastic deformation.
Section one discusses Young's Modulus in relation to metals, ceramics and glasses, and polymers. In this sub-section, engineering stress/strain and the differences between elastic/plastic deformations are discussed, as well as yield strength and tensile strength. This section includes some nice reference tables, and describes the stress/strain curve in great detail.
Sections two and three discuss elastic and plastic deformations. In the latter section, the slip plane for crystalline solids is well covered with some interesting illustrations.
Section four discusses hardness tests, in particular, Rockwell hardness and Brinell hardness numbers.
Creep and stress relaxation are discussed in section five, and covers the dislocation climb in plastic deformation among other topics. I feel that a better explanation regarding the preexponential constant is needed in this section.
The last section deals with viscoelastic deformation, and discusses various topics such as the glass transition temperature, viscous deformation, and softening temperatures. Also of interest is the subject of tempered glass, which is discussed in some detail.
This chapter does well in describing the general terminology and includes several equations with a practical application through example problems. In my opinion, though, this chapter doesn't cover enough information to answer some of the end of chapter problems, but a little on-line research should yield the required information.

Rating:
Summary: A decent book, Ch6 for example
Review: Chapter 7 in this book is titled Thermal Behavior. This chapter discusses the fundamentals of thermal behavior. I think that the author has done a good job of discussing the basics of thermal behavior in materials. The author discusses heat capacity and thermal expansion, conductivity, and shock. While I believe that the reading is easy I think the setup of the charts and sample problems could use some work. The chapter text and the sample problems are hard to separate visually, while the charts could be larger and a bit more colorful.

Rating:
Summary: Chapter 7 Review
Review: Chapter 7 in this book is titled Thermal Behavior. This chapter discusses the fundamentals of thermal behavior. I think that the author has done a good job of discussing the basics of thermal behavior in materials. The author discusses heat capacity and thermal expansion, conductivity, and shock. While I believe that the reading is easy I think the setup of the charts and sample problems could use some work. The chapter text and the sample problems are hard to separate visually, while the charts could be larger and a bit more colorful.

Rating:
Summary: Not good as a text book
Review: Overall, the concepts are not explained very well.

What really bothered me about this book is that the materials covered in each chapter are not enough to do the exercises in the back of the very same chapter. This is not good, especially for an "introductory" text book.

This book and its earlier editions have drawn many complaints over the years from UC Davis students who were forced to buy it for class, but the school keeps using this text because (in my opinion) the book is written by a UCD professor.

I think for the money, the readers deserve a much better text book.

Rating:
Summary: GOOD
Review: This book is not as bad as the previous reviewer described. I think its useful