MATLS 1M03 Lecture Notes - Reinforced Concrete, Electrochemical Potential, Planetary System
30 Apr 2013
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Materials are so important in the development of civilization that we associate ages with them. In the origin of human life on earth, the stone age, people used only natural materials, like stone, clay, skins, and wood. When people found copper and how to make it harder by alloying, the bronze age started about 3000 bc. The use of iron and steel, a stronger material that gave advantage in wars started at about 1200 bc. The next big step was the discovery of a cheap process to make steel around 1850, which enabled the railroads and the building of the modern infrastructure of the industrial world. Understanding of how materials behave like they do, and why they differ in properties was only possible with the atomistic understanding allowed by quantum mechanics, that first explained atoms and then solids starting in the 1930s.
