Comments on: Does Anyone Here Do Materials Engineering?

By: lithiumd

lithiumd — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:16:57 +0000

i would recommend you go chemical engineering instead,

By: test

test — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 09:21:30 +0000

Mechanical engineering is the subject that deals with ‘gadgets’. However, something like reactive body armor would be more in the realm of materials engineering.
As a materials engineer, you would learn about the molecular, atomic, and possibly subatomic features that determine a material’s properties. For example, why is steel stiffer than aluminum? Why is aluminum a better conductor of heat than steel? Why does cornstarch and water form a non-Newtonian fluid? These are the kinds of things you would learn about as a materials engineer (though there’s far more to it than that).
Mechanical engineering, on the other hand, is more about taking existing materials and figuring out how to assemble them into strong, light, and cheap mechanisms.

By: kwest

kwest — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:43:14 +0000

Material science is interested in how to optimize the properties of materials for a particular application. Hardness, tensile strength, elasticity, creep, conductivity. Crystal structure and grain boundaries
You will find them altering the recipe for metal alloys, plastics, composites and in semiconductors manufacture.
Its a bit more specialized and so tends to pay more. The caveat being there are less positions to fill.
Less about the contraption more about the material.
Machine design is in the domain of the Mechanical Engineer.