Semester Reflection
“How has the chemistry of materials shaped our past, present and how may it shape our future?”
Ever since the fateful day that our cave men ancestors made their first digging tools, man has depended on materials to enhance our lives. Entire periods of human history have been dedicated to the materials that shaped them, such as the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Indeed, man and material are almost impossible without one another. Every manmade object, from the Iphone to the first digging stick has consisted of certain arrangements of atoms, and these materials have truly shaped our past, present and futures.
An excellent example of how materials shaped the past comes to us from the ancient Vikings. As the Vikings began spreading throughout Europe and Asia on their raids, they realized that their swords were too brittle and rigid to fight to fight their advanced adversaries. This was due to the high amount of slag (or iron ore) which remained in their blades. To combat this issue they looked towards new materials. In Asia the Vikings came across a new method of forging steel which produced swords of very high quality. This steel was called “crucible steel” and it revolutionized Viking combat from that time on. Indeed much of the way the world is today can be explained through the dispersal of materials throughout history. If it had been the Incas and Aztecs who had had the resources to produce guns, as opposed to the Europeans, maybe we would be living in a very different society today.
Materials shape our reality profoundly today. Never in human history has so much been so available with so little cost or hassle. Materials of today are easier to manufacture and easier to manufacture than ever before which is leading our society towards good and bad horizons. In the future, materials will play an even heavier roll than they do today. Our society will become much more dependent on our materials because they will make life so much easier. A good example of a future material is graphene. Graphene will revolutionize the future of building and many other fields, while remaining nothing more than a specific arrangement of atoms. There is a reason some describe our world as “The Material World”.
“How does the structure of matter on the atomic, molecular, microscopic and macroscopic levels determine a material’s properties?”
Almost everything in the Universe seems to follow trends; atoms are no exception. At every level atoms exhibit similar yet distinct traits that determine their properties. At an atomic level atoms are most distinct. They bond and attract in ways that one cannot distinguish from other scales but definitely determine their properties. At the atomic level atoms bond to other atoms to form molecules which give atoms their bonding properties. Electronegativity is another property that can only be determined at the atomic scale because it relates to the size of the atoms nucleus and the number of electrons pulling on that nucleus. Not all properties can be gleaned from the atomic scale however. It takes multiple atoms of the same substance (AKA the microscopic level) to determine other factors, like the bonding structure of a substance. One can only determine if a substance is ionically or covalently bonded by analyzing how structures form. If a structure has a crystalline structure at the microscopic it will be Ionically bonded. It will also be Crystalline at the macroscopic level, which demonstrates the trends between microscopic and macroscopic. At the macroscopic level one can determine properties more useful to human need such as melting and boiling point, conductivity and malleability. It is only at this level that these properties can be identified because at any smaller scale, the substances would be to frail or the sample sizes to meager to get accurate results.
Ever since the fateful day that our cave men ancestors made their first digging tools, man has depended on materials to enhance our lives. Entire periods of human history have been dedicated to the materials that shaped them, such as the Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Indeed, man and material are almost impossible without one another. Every manmade object, from the Iphone to the first digging stick has consisted of certain arrangements of atoms, and these materials have truly shaped our past, present and futures.
An excellent example of how materials shaped the past comes to us from the ancient Vikings. As the Vikings began spreading throughout Europe and Asia on their raids, they realized that their swords were too brittle and rigid to fight to fight their advanced adversaries. This was due to the high amount of slag (or iron ore) which remained in their blades. To combat this issue they looked towards new materials. In Asia the Vikings came across a new method of forging steel which produced swords of very high quality. This steel was called “crucible steel” and it revolutionized Viking combat from that time on. Indeed much of the way the world is today can be explained through the dispersal of materials throughout history. If it had been the Incas and Aztecs who had had the resources to produce guns, as opposed to the Europeans, maybe we would be living in a very different society today.
Materials shape our reality profoundly today. Never in human history has so much been so available with so little cost or hassle. Materials of today are easier to manufacture and easier to manufacture than ever before which is leading our society towards good and bad horizons. In the future, materials will play an even heavier roll than they do today. Our society will become much more dependent on our materials because they will make life so much easier. A good example of a future material is graphene. Graphene will revolutionize the future of building and many other fields, while remaining nothing more than a specific arrangement of atoms. There is a reason some describe our world as “The Material World”.
“How does the structure of matter on the atomic, molecular, microscopic and macroscopic levels determine a material’s properties?”
Almost everything in the Universe seems to follow trends; atoms are no exception. At every level atoms exhibit similar yet distinct traits that determine their properties. At an atomic level atoms are most distinct. They bond and attract in ways that one cannot distinguish from other scales but definitely determine their properties. At the atomic level atoms bond to other atoms to form molecules which give atoms their bonding properties. Electronegativity is another property that can only be determined at the atomic scale because it relates to the size of the atoms nucleus and the number of electrons pulling on that nucleus. Not all properties can be gleaned from the atomic scale however. It takes multiple atoms of the same substance (AKA the microscopic level) to determine other factors, like the bonding structure of a substance. One can only determine if a substance is ionically or covalently bonded by analyzing how structures form. If a structure has a crystalline structure at the microscopic it will be Ionically bonded. It will also be Crystalline at the macroscopic level, which demonstrates the trends between microscopic and macroscopic. At the macroscopic level one can determine properties more useful to human need such as melting and boiling point, conductivity and malleability. It is only at this level that these properties can be identified because at any smaller scale, the substances would be to frail or the sample sizes to meager to get accurate results.