Introduction to Materials Science for Engineers (6th 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 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.