We are independent & ad-supported. We may earn a commission for purchases made through our links.
WiseGeek

Advertiser Disclosure

Our website is an independent, advertising-supported platform. We provide our content free of charge to our readers, and to keep it that way, we rely on revenue generated through advertisements and affiliate partnerships. This means that when you click on certain links on our site and make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn more.

How We Make Money

We sustain our operations through affiliate commissions and advertising. If you click on an affiliate link and make a purchase, we may receive a commission from the merchant at no additional cost to you. We also display advertisements on our website, which help generate revenue to support our work and keep our content free for readers. Our editorial team operates independently from our advertising and affiliate partnerships to ensure that our content remains unbiased and focused on providing you with the best information and recommendations based on thorough research and honest evaluations. To remain transparent, we’ve provided a list of our current affiliate partners here.
Technology

What is Materials Science?

By Maya Austen
Updated Feb 25, 2024
Our promise to you
WiseGeek is dedicated to creating trustworthy, high-quality content that always prioritizes transparency, integrity, and inclusivity above all else. Our ensure that our content creation and review process includes rigorous fact-checking, evidence-based, and continual updates to ensure accuracy and reliability.

Our Promise to you

Founded in 2002, our company has been a trusted resource for readers seeking informative and engaging content. Our dedication to quality remains unwavering—and will never change. We follow a strict editorial policy, ensuring that our content is authored by highly qualified professionals and edited by subject matter experts. This guarantees that everything we publish is objective, accurate, and trustworthy.

Over the years, we've refined our approach to cover a wide range of topics, providing readers with reliable and practical advice to enhance their knowledge and skills. That's why millions of readers turn to us each year. Join us in celebrating the joy of learning, guided by standards you can trust.

Editorial Standards

At WiseGeek, we are committed to creating content that you can trust. Our editorial process is designed to ensure that every piece of content we publish is accurate, reliable, and informative.

Our team of experienced writers and editors follows a strict set of guidelines to ensure the highest quality content. We conduct thorough research, fact-check all information, and rely on credible sources to back up our claims. Our content is reviewed by subject matter experts to ensure accuracy and clarity.

We believe in transparency and maintain editorial independence from our advertisers. Our team does not receive direct compensation from advertisers, allowing us to create unbiased content that prioritizes your interests.

There are many branches of science, but all fields of science have a singular overall goal, which is to advance the understanding of natural processes in order to answer questions and solve problems. Materials science, as the name implies, is the branch of science dedicated to the study of materials. It’s the branch of science that seeks to understand why materials behave the way they do. In an effort to discover these facts, materials scientists set out to understand the properties of different materials, how they’re processed, their microstructure and how these different elements relate to one another. Gaining this understanding has many useful applications.

The tools used in modern-day materials science allow materials scientists not only to observe virtually every atom of any given material but to manipulate these atoms as well. Through this manipulation, scientists are able to produce hybrid materials with highly distinctive properties. Thanks to materials science, it is possible to fabricate high-temperature alloys, semiconductor and superconductor materials, nanomaterials, biomaterials and a whole range of other materials. This ability has fueled extraordinary biological and technological achievements.

Though a field unto itself, materials science is considered an interdisciplinary field because it crosses into the fields of chemistry, physics, biology and engineering. Skyscrapers would not be possible without the work done in materials science. The integrated circuits that are used in desktop and laptop computers is made possible by work done in the field of materials science. With just about any modern day advancement, it’s possible to show how materials science played a significant role in its invention.

Technological innovation is often reliant upon not only the understanding of materials, but the availability of advanced materials. The field of material science fills this need. Materials science is not a new field of science by any stretch of the imagination. People have been studying materials for thousands of years, but to different degrees of depth. Whether it is makeup, jewelry, coins, weapons or anything else that has been invented, materials science has had a hand in all of it.

WiseGeek is dedicated to providing accurate and trustworthy information. We carefully select reputable sources and employ a rigorous fact-checking process to maintain the highest standards. To learn more about our commitment to accuracy, read our editorial process.
See our Editorial Process Share Feedback

Discussion Comments

By irontoenail — On Dec 25, 2014

@Ana1234 - I agree that materials science needs to be promoted more vigorously in schools. It's the basis for so many different options at university and most of them are for the kinds of jobs that are always hiring, like engineering and chemistry.

Not that I think people should choose a career solely on whether its a

By Ana1234 — On Dec 24, 2014

@MrsPramm - I actually think it's better to have that kind of attitude towards those topics, to call them a science and to encourage investigation into the materials rather than just giving kids busy-work projects to do that don't have any kind of innovation or real learning of skills.

I remember when I was at high school we basically all made the same bookends and the teacher did all the difficult things for us, rather than teaching us how to do them ourselves.

But I've visited a high school with a modern program a couple of years ago and it was amazing how much the students could do. They were making everything from clay items to candles to clocks and so forth, and doing it essentially without help.

Besides material science is something we want young people to be inspired by, since they are the ones who are going to be making all of our objects in the future.

By MrsPramm — On Dec 23, 2014

I was surprised when I went through a diploma course to teach at a high school that this is what they often call what we used to call woodwork and sewing. They call them hard and soft materials science, or just materials science and kind of lump them together.

I guess I remember it being the class where they would split us into the boys and the girls, but I never really thought of the two subjects as being related, and I certainly didn't think of them as being a science. I guess they just call every topic a "science" these days though.

WiseGeek, in your inbox

Our latest articles, guides, and more, delivered daily.

WiseGeek, in your inbox

Our latest articles, guides, and more, delivered daily.