Applied Science and Engineering

The interdisciplinary field of materials science, also commonly known as materials science and engineering, is the design and discovery of new materials, especially solids. The intellectual roots of materials science date back to the Age of Enlightenment, when researchers began to use analytical thinking from chemistry, physics, and engineering to understand ancient phenomenological observations in metallurgy and mineralogy. Materials science still incorporates elements of physics, chemistry, and engineering. In this way, this field has long been considered by academic institutions as a sub-field of these related fields. Materials science is a hybrid discipline that hybridizes metallurgy, ceramics, solid state physics and chemistry.