Alfred University 90's Ad: Ceramics Engineering

Just how 90's can one video get?

Let me count the ways

• 0:15 - dutch angles shifting back and forth (repeats at 0:31...and 0:53...and so many times) just to make things 'exciting' 
• 0:25 - flickering font on screen
• 0:37 - jumping footage, eliminating some frames to make the motion 'edgier'
• 0:40 - the good doctor's duster coat
• 0:46 - repeated, slightly closer footage of the same hammer hitting a window
• 0:49 - animation repeating quickly again and again
• 1:24 - science lab lit with green, orange, and purple lights
• 1:53 - slow motion glass jar drop
• 2:24 - unnecessary sound effect
• 2:50 - glass falling footage repeated from earlier
• 2:53 - racing footage stretched and tilted as it plays
• 3:09 - washed-out airplane footage tilting back and forth to a rock score

Ok, I quit...the cliches are just too numerous for me to note for the full fifteen minute run time of the video.

It's like the Bill Nye Show has come alive all over again.

I will recap the content, however...

• hardening tempered glass
• space shuttle tiles
• ceramic engineering lab footage
• basic ceramic properties
• possibilities of ceramic engines in cars
• catalytic converters
• superconductivity
• piezoelectric crystals
• liquid crystal window coatings
• fiber optics
• bioceramics

The animation at 2:03 - showing ion exchange to harden the surface a glass (similar to the production of Gorilla Glass) isn't necessarily a 90's cliche, but it is really well explained.

In case you're curious, Alfred University still hosts the New York State College of Ceramics. Looks like it might be fun to visit. Plus it looks like Alix (now Alexis) Clare is still there.

What is Materials Science and Engineering?

Dude, we're shooting here.

At 1:34, some guy starts to walk into the shot on the far left edge.

I don't know why, but that bothered me. I feel like they could have re-shot that clip easily enough.

And at 2:30, what purpose is being served by melting that penny?

The video is, admittedly, an advertisement for Iowa State's MS&E program, but it's a nice, general introduction to what material science students study at university.

Smart Materials of the Future - with Anna Ploszajski

"Rock-paper-scissors is a game that you use to compare materials' properties. The rock blunts the scissors because rock is harder than stainless steel."

C'mon, nerd, rock-paper-scissors is just a game like mumbledepeg or roshambo.

The simplicity of showing a smart material via pine cones is brilliant.

Oh, I found a definition of smart materials that I very much like (via BBC): "[s]mart materials have properties that react to changes in their environment. This means that one of their properties can be changed by an external condition, such as temperature, light, pressure or electricity. This change is reversible and can be repeated many times."

Other smart materials mentioned in the video are lime mortar from the Egyptian pyramids, piezoelectric quartz crystals, thermochromic pigments (on a mug), NiTiNOL, and ferrofluids. Most of the latter materials are applied to the future of airplane design.

Matter, Energy, and the Material Scientist

I'm hopeful that there are more creative uses for the formcards that are demonstrated above than just making toothbrush holders.

I do appreciate the demonstration of the formcards' glass transition from solid to flexible solid. I'm curious to see some data as to at what specific temperature that happens for this specific polymer (check the MSDS, and you still won't know).

What Captain America Can Teach Us About Science

It was my understanding that Cap's shield was made entirely of vibranium, but I guess it's a vibranium/steel alloy.

I appreciate that Dr Mathaudhu doesn't go into the fictional element vibranium's history and existence. Instead he just mentions that a 'mystery element' falls into the experiment and solidifies into what would later become Cap's shield.

Mathaudhu then goes into the connection that he "seeks to design materials that can live in these extremes" - just like Cap's shield. He mentions the switch from a steel to an aluminum alloy in the F150 frame.

He also explains that if a material scientist creates an awesome material but can't reproduce it - like the creator of Cap's shield did - then that wouldn't be a very successful material scientist.

The shield, by the way, is not quite unbreakable in the Marvel universes, but it's certainly a scientific marvel.

Material Properties 101

The narrator's Irish accent, tho...

The introduction to the video says there are six terms that he's hoping we understand by the end of the video...

• stiff
• strong
• ductile
• brittle
• tough
• hard

Man, if all of my students understood those terms by the end of the semester, I'd be thrilled.

We get coverage of a tensile test to explain stress, strain, and the stress-strain curve (along with many of its aspects - yield strength, ultimate strength, Young's modulus, fracture, tensile strength, max allowable load/stress, toughness).

He then covers hardness briefly, explaining how the Rockwell hardness test works.

It's not perfect because it left me wanting to know more...but maybe that's the point.

The entire video is six minutes long, and the last forty-five seconds or so is an advertisement for the video's sponsor - annoying but still school appropriate, thankfully.