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Materials Science Wiki
Materials Science Test Exchange 2017
Past Threads: 2011 (Trial), 2013, 2014

Hi! I've never done materials science before and I haven't received the rules yet... I've also heard it was a difficult lab event as well. What are the best ways to study for this event, and also to help other people on the team as well?

lavendercats814 wrote:Hi! I've never done materials science before and I haven't received the rules yet... I've also heard it was a difficult lab event as well. What are the best ways to study for this event, and also to help other people on the team as well?

I did this event my Freshman year and was one my first experience with science olympiad. Exciting to be doing it again this year now with an actual Chem and Physics background! To study what I am doing is taking notes based on the rules and then taking those notes to construct an organized binder. The difficulty from this event I don't think comes from the material being particularly difficult more that it is just that most competitors do not know anything about the subject and have to start learning from scratch. From Freshman year I remember that the tests are basically a good mix of chemistry stuff and then physical stuff that both relate to materials. Also, you should expect to complete a lab of some sort based off some of the more common physical properties.

How do you prepare for the lab portion of this event? Does anyone have any resources, links, vid, etc?

I, like other people on here, have never done materials science before (actually never done science olympiad at all before) and was curious what is the best way to go about this event?
I can't really find many practice tests and have no clue where to even begin studying- nevermind the lab part (how does that work?).
Any suggestions or anything?

runner_girl15 wrote:I, like other people on here, have never done materials science before (actually never done science olympiad at all before) and was curious what is the best way to go about this event?
I can't really find many practice tests and have no clue where to even begin studying- nevermind the lab part (how does that work?).
Any suggestions or anything?

From what I can tell, this event is clearly chemistry-based (although materials science in itself is a combination of chemistry and physics), so I would start with an AP Chemistry book, stressing the chapter on solid structure. In the chapter, it should go over most of the solid-state chemistry that you need for this event (hcp, ccp, body/face centered) and most textbooks go into ceramics, composites, polymers, and metal bonding so you should be fine with the chemistry aspect. I recommend Tro's Chemistry and Zumdahl's (although Zumdahl is less user friendly but much more common). Make sure that the book is AP or college level, since most high school textbooks only go into body-centered and simple cubic shapes.

For the lab aspect and the more engineering aspect (shear, stress, etc...), someone else could probably give better advice, but I would start with the wiki. From there, look up concepts on google and perhaps a materials science textbook if you really want to buy one (though that's probably very overkill). Google and the wiki are probably your best friends in that one. I remember that ChemWiki once had a materials science section, but I can't find it anymore.

Good luck though!

Would chapter 3, 6, 8, 12, 14, 16 of this textbook cover all lf part a/b in the rules?

Thanks!

ic3kreem wrote:Would chapter 3, 6, 8, 12, 14, 16 of this textbook cover all lf part a/b in the rules?

Thanks!

Looked over the table of contents for that textbook and I can say the topics are for sure relevant in that book. You could learn this same information thought from some google searches. Having put a decent amount of time into this event I can say that you can learn most of the topics in the textbooks from other sources like lecture notes, websites or other random places on the web. Overall, yes those textbook chapters seem relevant but maybe look at other options before spending money on the book or get it from a library.

That's probably the most popular book for introductory Materials Science classes at the undergraduate level.

"The Science and Engineering of Materials" by Askeland and Haddleton is also pretty popular.

You can get an old edition of either of those books for pretty cheap. I see a 5th edition of Callister for $3.74 on Amazon, or an international edition of Askeland & Haddleton for $0.79. Don't be afraid to order an older edition - there haven't been any fundamental changes in the content applicable to this event (or most of the content of the book, for that matter) in that timeframe. PDF copies also appear to be quite easy to find on Google - but seeing as how cheap you can get used ones, it seems worth getting a hard copy.

I don't believe the Callister book covers contact angle, surface wetting, surface tension, etc. The Askeland & Haddleton book does cover most of that. (Typically, "Materials Science" refers to solids, which is what most introductory courses will focus on - although this event also applies to liquids - so you may not see those topics in every Materials Science reference).

Hello,

I am new to Science Olympiad and so I don't know much about the format of any of the events. Looking over the rules, it seems participants should have a solid grasp of engineering terminology and equations for stress and strain. Will those in the competition be required to solve engineering problems (determining modification of specific dimensions by stress, for example) and to what extent if so?

Thanks!