Materials are probably more deep-seated in our culture than most of us realize.
Transportation, housing, clothing, communication, recreation, and food production—
virtually every segment of our everyday lives is influenced to one degree or another
by materials. Historically, the development and advancement of societies have been
intimately tied to the members’ ability to produce and manipulate materials to fill
their needs. In fact, early civilizations have been designated by the level of their
materials development (Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age).
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| Some Bronze Age Weapons |
The earliest humans had access to only a very limited number of materials,
those that occur naturally: stone, wood, clay, skins, and so on.With time they discovered
techniques for producing materials that had properties superior to those
of the natural ones; these new materials included pottery and various metals. Furthermore,
it was discovered that the properties of a material could be altered by
heat treatments and by the addition of other substances. At this point, materials utilization
was totally a selection process that involved deciding from a given, rather
limited set of materials the one best suited for an application by virtue of its characteristics.
It was not until relatively recent times that scientists came to understand
the relationships between the structural elements of materials and their properties.
This knowledge, acquired over approximately the past 100 years, has empowered
them to fashion, to a large degree, the characteristics of materials.Thus, tens of thousands
of different materials have evolved with rather specialized characteristics that
meet the needs of our modern and complex society; these include metals, plastics,
glasses, and fibers.
The development of many technologies that make our existence so comfortable
has been intimately associated with the accessibility of suitable materials.
An advancement in the understanding of a material type is often the forerunner
to the stepwise progression of a technology. For example, automobiles
would not have been possible without the availability of inexpensive steel or
some other comparable substitute. In our contemporary era, sophisticated electronic
devices rely on components that are made from what are called semiconducting
materials.
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