The Structure of Materials

Are You Looking for a Unified and Concise Approach to Teaching and Learning the Structure of Materials? Allen and Thomas present information in a manner consistent with the way future scientists and engineers will be required to think about materials' selection, design, and use. Students will learn the fundamentals of three different states of condensed matter-glasses, crystals, and liquid crystals-and develop a set of tools for describing all of them. Above all, they'll gain a better understanding of the principles of structure common to all materials. Key concepts, such as symmetry theory, are introduced and applied to provide a common viewpoint for describing structures of ceramic, metallic, and polymeric materials. Structure-sensitive properties of real materials are introduced. The text also includes a variety of worked example problems. Other texts available in the MIT Series: Thermodynamics of Materials, Vol I, Ragone, 30885-4 Thermodynamics of Materials, Vol II: Kinetics, Ragone, 30886-2 Physical Ceramics: Principles for Ceramics Science and Engineering, Chiang, Birnie, Kingery, 59873-9 Electronic Properties of Engineering Materials, Livingston, 31627-X

About the Authors SAMUEL M. ALLEN is Professor of Physical Metallurgy in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at M.I.T. He earned a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Stevens Institute of Technology and an S.M. and a Ph.D. from M.I.T. His research interests include phase transformations, solid/solid interfaces, structure/property relations in high-temperature alloys, three-dimensional printing of metal tools for plastic injection molding, and alloys for high-strain actuators. He is also co-authoring a graduate textbook, "Kinetic Processes in Materials," with Robert W. Balluffi and W. Craig Carter. EDWIN L. THOMAS is the Morris Cohen Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at M.I.T. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts and a Ph.D. in Materials Science from Cornell University. His research interests include processing, microstructure and mechanical property relations of polymers, and optical properties of liquid crystals and polymeric-based photonic band gap materials. Professor Thomas’ honors and awards include the High Polymer Physics Prize of the American Physical Society and the American Chemical Society Creative Polymer Chemist Award.