An Introduction to Physics (Material Science Metallurgy)

By Jason King

An introduction to Physics (Material Science Metallurgy) is suitable for senior college, university revision or those just curious! Contains 100+ colour charts and diagrams, 4 extensive case studies and multiple formula and expressions explained.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jason King
• Release date: Aug 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005400408

Jason King

Lives in Geelong, Australia. Born 1971 Married with 4 boys Upcoming Books include: - An Introduction to AI Coding - An Introduction to Microprocessors Thank you to Marcus Hayden for the sepia icon artwork used throughout my study books. www.art.mdhayden.com

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An Introduction to Physics

(Material Science Metallurgy)

Published by Jason King at Smashwords

Copyright 2022 Jason King

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This eBook is licensed for your personal education and enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Sepia icons created by Marcus Hayden under paid contract from the author.

Contents

Introduction

Atomic Structure

Elements and Compounds

Crystals

Polymers

Composites

Metals and Alloys

Metal Properties

Manipulation of Metal Properties

Corrosion

Material Selection

Case Study – Material Selection

Case Study – Joining Metals via Riveting

Case Study – Joining Metals via Welding

Case Study – Metal Drawing

Conclusion

Appendix – Units and Quantities

About the Author

Introduction

There are many different fields to Physics and Chemistry and although the field of interest in this workbook is Metallurgy it fits into a category of its own called Material Science as it deals with both the physical and chemical behaviour of metallic elements.

This workbook will therefor look briefly at the metals from the perspective of atomic structure, chemical structure, bonding/joining, manufacturing and properties.

This workbook is by no means a comprehensive study of the field of Metallurgy but serves only as a basic introduction that would suffice for beginners, junior high schoolers and the curious. My aim is that it would not only lay a basic foundation for those who plan to continue on in their study of Material Science but also spark an interest in those who previously had little inclination to do so.

Back to Contents

Atomic Structure

All known material in the universe has been classified and arranged into a particular order on what is known as the Periodic table of the elements (an element is a pure material of one type of atom). As the properties and behaviour of the elements is based on the atomic structure, and primarily the electrons, a brief look at the atomic structure of elements is warranted.

Electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom at quantised energy levels. These energy levels are given the term shells and are numbered from 1 (the most inner) to 7 (the most outer), or given the alphabetical representation capital K (most inner) to capital Q (most outer).

Each shell is also divided into subshells labelled s,p,d and f. Not all shells have a full range of subshells. For example Shell 1 has subshell s only, Shell 2 has s and p, Shell 3 has s,p, and d, and Shells 4 through to 7 have all subshells s,p,d and f.

As mentioned, each shell has a certain energy level associated with it that any electrons within it and its subshells must possess. As orbiting electrons tend to want to have the minimum energy level they can have, they fill up the shells in the following least to highest energy state order:

1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 4s, 3d, 4p, 5s, 4d, 5p, 6s, 4f, 5d, 6p, 7s, 5f, 6d, 7p

As electrons tend to repel each other, there are only a certain number of electrons that can fill a shell before it starts to get crowded. For example, shell 1 can only contain 2 electrons, shell 2 has a capacity of 8, shell 3 can have no more than 18 and shell 4 has a maximum of 32. The outer shell electrons are called valance electrons and are the easiest/first to interact with other atoms.

Armed with this information we should now be able to understand the table below that shows the shell configuration of 7 example atoms.

Note: Z equals the number of protons at the nucleus of the atom. The number of electrons orbiting the nucleus will equal Z in an electrically neutral atom.

The electron configuration of elements are written in a particular format, as seen by the oxygen and boron examples following.

The oxygen atom is shown to the right. It has eight Protons and eight Neutrons in its nucleus. It hence has eight orbiting electrons distributed accordingly in shells 1 and 2. Oxygen can therefore be written as:

O8 = 1s2 2s2 2p4

Because there has been no change in shells between 2s2 and 2p4, it is sometimes abbreviated to simply 1s2 2s2 p4

Boron has five neutrons and 5 protons in its nucleus and is shown to the left of the image above. Its electron configuration is:

B5 = 1s2 2s2 2p1

Expanding on the notation examples above, there are further notation format rules. Iron (Fe) for example has an electronic configuration of 1s2 2s2 2p6 3s2 3p6 3d6 4s2. The superscript numbers indicates how many electrons are in that particular subshell.

Both Argon (Ar) and Neon (Ne) are very stable inert gases that have maximum number of electrons in their outermost energy levels (shells). Because of this they are used as foundation blocks when writing electronic configurations for other elements. For example:

Ar = electronic configuration of Ne plus 3s2 3p6

= [Ne] 3s2 3p6

We can therefore see that the shorthand notation for the electronic configuration of iron is:

Fe = [Ar] 3d6 4s2

Mass is defined as the amount of matter in an object (as opposed to weight which is relative to gravitational force). A Hydrogen atom as shown below on the left consists of a single proton and one orbiting electron. The Helium atom is shown on the right and clearly consists of 2 Protons and two Neutrons with 2 orbiting electrons.

The mass of a Proton and Neutron is approximately 1.67 x 10-27kg and the mass of an electron is approximately 9.11 x 10-31kg. Going by these figures we can see that Helium is approximately 4 time the mass of Hydrogen, although the atomic weight (Z) of Helium is defined as 2