Intro to Metal Plasticity — Lesson 1

Engineers use different materials in design based on their nature and properties. 

Try to tell what kind of material is used in the disassembled car and why?

Most beverage cans are made of aluminum. Besides the high strength of aluminum, the other main reason to use this material is that aluminum cans are easily crushed for recycling.

The start of humans using metals traces back to 5th millennium BCE, but today, we are still studying and exploring metal materials. In this session, we will discuss one very important behavior of metals, plasticity.

Lecture

In this lesson, we discuss brittle and ductile materials and introduce metal materials.

Alternate video link.

Handout

Here are the accompanying hand-out slides for this lesson.