Abstract:

Laboratory work is an essential and reinforcing element in the traditional lecture-based process of delivering academic content on education in Material Science and Engineering. In the laboratory, students can explore their understanding of the subjects being taught by placing their learning in context. In the new degrees of the Bologna framework, student autonomy has gained great relevance, hence, the methodology and laboratory practice that will be presented in this work are designed in order to encourage students to take their own decisions and provide an appropriate environment for students to develop their skills as engineers.

The main objective of this laboratory practice is to make understand students the essence of the “Fundamentals of Materials Science” subject. For this purpose, it is of great importance to understand which is the relationship between products, materials, manufacturing techniques and properties.

We are surrounded by materials, material are everywhere, and in fact all products are made by materials. Students, despite their short knowledge about this subject at the time they do this laboratory practice, can intuitively distinguish a hard material of a soft material, if a material is brittle or not, the type of the material used (if it is a metal, ceramic, polymer…), and even sometimes how are they made. This is basically the aim of the practice, try to understand manipulating different set of products which are the main families of materials, how many different class of materials exist, why some materials are used in products with specific purposes, which are the most relevant properties of these materials and how they are made.

This practice has recently been implemented in the School of Engineering of Bilbao for the second year students attending “Fundamental of Material Science” subject. The result has been very positive.

Keywords:

Laboratory practice, Material Science and Engineering, products, materials, processing, properties.