Challenges in education; A new approach to material research

Some engineers have joined together to study materials to see how these solids interact under various environments or conditions. The fact of the matter is that most of us in the group started studying materials because they were important to our own individual branches of engineering so we did not start to form a group. We simply discovered that a number of us had common interests and therefore forming some kind of a group to exploit what we had in common seemed like a rather logical next step. The speaker is Dr. George pierce all in a moment he talks about new dimensions and materials research. Challenges in education presented by Duke University. Here with today's feature is Charles past the formation of a group of engineers interested in studying all kinds of materials has given many research projects a boost. Now men with different training can

work together to solve mutual problems. Dr. George Piersol a professor of mechanical engineering speaks about the group. There are probably more areas of divergent interests than there are of common interest. The one thing that we all seem to recognize though is that we do not now have a complete understanding of what a material is and of how it behaves. And the principal long range aim of the group is to explore the various ways in which we can model a material and its interaction with these various mechanical forces which I can call fields for a rather general term. Dr Piersol gives an example. We each at the moment model this interaction in a somewhat different way using a different form of mathematics or using a physical picture or a physical model. I think most of us agree that our own individual ways of doing

this are satisfactory in a limited situation but for instance if I become interested in how a material behaves with respect to mechanical properties in the presence of a very strong magnetic field then I really have to go and talk to somebody with an a better background than I have in magnetic properties. The voluntary group is somewhat unique at Duke because all members continue their identification with their individual departments whether it be mechanical civil electrical or biomedical engineering. What excites me most about the group is our intention of exploring the question of how one represents the behavior of a material. My formal education is in metallurgy and so I tend to think of materials in terms of atoms and molecules and how they respond to various forces. I think

electrical engineers tend to view material responses in terms of the mathematical equations of electric and magnetic field theory. Civil engineers and people in applied mechanics tend to view material behavior in terms of the mathematical equations of continuum mechanics and I think probably the first main realisation that we've made is that maybe each one of us is only looking at one aspect of the material and its interaction that we do not yet. And I don't think anyone yet has a complete picture of how a material will behave particularly with respect to rather complex forces. I think this is the kind of problem engineers are going to have to deal with increasingly in the future and at the moment we do not have a very complete picture of how such materials might behave. This enter disciplinary approach to materials research can offer a better

understanding of the behavior and structure of materials. This is Charles Russell with challenges in education from Duke University. This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.