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PREFACE

Many new materials and devices which were designed to possess specific properties for special purposes have become available in the recent past. These have had their origins in basic scientific concepts. Engineers must understand the bases for these developments so that they can make optimum use of available materials and further advance the existing technology as new materials appear. The main objective of this text is to provide engineers and engineering students a unified, elementary treatment of the basic physical relationships governing those properties of materials of greatest interest and utility.

Many texts on solid state physics, written primarily for advanced undergraduate physics courses, make use of sophisticated mathematical derivations in which only the most significant parts are given; the intermediate steps are left to the reader to provide. This makes it difficult for the average engineer to follow and has the effect of discouraging or "turning off" many readers. Other texts are not much more than surveys of "materials science" and provide little insight into the nature of the phenomena.

This text represents an attempt to provide a middle ground between these extremes. It is designed to explain the origin and nature of the most widely used physical properties of materials to engineers; thus, it prepares them to understand and to utilize materials more effectively. It also may be used as a textbook for senior undergraduate and first-year graduate students.

Practicing engineers will find this text helpful in getting up to date. Readers with some familiarity with this field will be able to follow the presentations with ease. Engineering students and those taking physics courses will find this book to be a useful source of examples of applications of the theory to commercially available materials as well as for uncomplicated explanations of physical properties. In many cases alternate explanations have been provided for clarity.

An effort has been made to keep the mathematics as unsophisticated as possible without "watering down" or distorting the concepts. In practically all cases only a mastery of elementary calculus is required to follow the derivations. All of the "algebra" is shown and no steps in the derivations are considered to be obvious to the reader. Explanations are provided in cases where more advanced mathematics is employed The problems have been designed to promote understanding rather than mathematical agility or computational skill.

The introductory chapters are intended to span the gap between the classical mechanics, which is familiar to engineers and engineering students, and the quantum mechanics, which usually is unfamiliar. The limitations of the classical approach are shown in elementary ways and the need for the quantum mechanics is demonstrated. The quantum mechanics is developed directly from this by the use of uncomplicated examples of various phenomena. The degree to which the quantum mechanics is presented is sufficient for the understanding of the physical properties discussed in the subsequent chapters; it also provides a sound basis for more advanced study.

Introductory sections are given which guide the reader to the topic under consideration. The basic physical relationships are provided. These are drawn from concepts and properties which are known to those with engineering backgrounds; they lead the reader into the topic of interest. In some cases small amounts of material are repeated for the sake of clarity and convenience. Some topics, frequently presented as separate chapters in physics texts, have been incorporated in various sections in which they are directly applicable to materials. Lattice dynamics is one of the subjects treated in this way. Where appropriate, sections covering the properties of commercially available materials are included and discussed. This approach provides more comprehensive presentations which can be readily followed and applied by the reader.

Author: Daniel D. Pollock