(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best materials science books

If you like the online course lectures, you should definately look at those. I know tons of great schools such as Yale, UCLA, MIT, Stanford etc. etc. offer full lecture series on youtube. Usually the syllabi are online for you to look at so you can get a feel for it.

I am more of a book learner myself so I will try to make some recommends, but when looking for books try googling, reading stackexchange posts and Amazon reviews.

I'm going to disagree with /u/Orion952 on Fraleigh's book, its an alright book but I have seen much better. For Abstract Algebra, I would recommend Nicholson's book. Its a very gentle introduction to the subject. There are lots of computation problems as well as proofs you can work through so you can get a nice feel for the subject. I would also hunt down the pdf for Dummit and Foote's book as well, I thought it was pretty gentle for the most part as well as comprehensive.

For analysis and topology, I have encountered some decent books.

Strichartz for analysis is very wordy and conversational, so I didn't care for it myself hence didn't read very much of it (I much prefer the style of Walter Rudin) but it might be good for starting out.

Bhatt has written a very nice book for analysis and covers a lot of material on metric space topology. I actually know the author pretty well so if you are interested in the book I may be able to hook you up.

Simmons has written a book that has a pretty conversational style, but I wasn't a big fan of his style. Bhatt's book will have a more "traditional" approach, but thats not to say it isn't readable. The first half of the book will cover the same stuff Bhatt's book does and the second half will be more advanced stuff including some concepts from Functional Analysis (which is a pretty interesting topic).

For Topology, if you have read some of the analysis books above, I would say Munkres' book is nice and it has tons of examples. But try googling beginner topology books if you want to get into the subject sooner, I know I have seen a few stackexchange threads on this.

These are really the topics one needs to know to really dive into mathematics beyond rote computation. I'm sure there are more books out there but these come off my head at this moment.

Well, in my case, it was the MatSci degree; so, er, yeah, that's an option!

More realistically, the primary textbook we used was: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Materials-Science-Engineering-William-Callister/dp/0471134597/

I'm not really a book sort of person, but I did end up using that one a lot. It's used as an undergrad text in some places, so as long as you've some high school physics/chemistry you should be ok with that. It describes itself as an introduction, and I'd agree with that - there were areas that it stopped a little short on for me; but I'm pretty sure that they will not be areas of practical importance for blacksmithing. (Generally the more esoteric areas).

It does cover more than just metals - ceramics, polymers and composites too. Presuming you want to learn inspired from the smithing, you'll want to focus on the metallurgy - which is understandable, but it's well worth reading a little into the other sorts of materials. The mechanics of plastic deformation are much clarified by considering polymers; the way a cutting edge works is much more like a ceramic; and hypo eutectic steels are actually a metal/ceramic composite in microstructure (and there's lots more overlap too).

Like all academic books, the sticker prices is in the 'eye watering' category; don't let that put you off. Get an older edition, used, and go back until you find a price that suits you. The difference from the latest edition matters in two cases: to follow along with a lecture series; and the 'up to date-ness' of the state of the art stuff - I don't think that either is a good reason for you to pay extra, in this context. Steel is a pretty old fashioned material, and really the point of such a book is education, to give you the grounding so that you could pick up the specific details of a new steel quickly from a few diagrams and a data sheet.

The other stuff I covered (Ulfberht, crucible steel etc), really comes from a separate interest in historical stuff, and that's something I've picked up organically (rubbing shoulders with archaeologists at living history events for a large part), so I'm not in a position to recommend anything there.

I mostly learned from a variety of sources, as there's not an ideal single text on this avenue of research, IMO.

I found general small-angle scattering references for free here and here, the latter being a PDF document from the EMBL small-angle scattering group. For NSE experiments on these sorts of systems, it's pretty much expected you've already done characterization of your samples via small-angle x-ray and/or neutron scattering

I'd also recommend the NIST Summer School course materials as a good and inexpensive way to get started on the neutron spectroscopy side of things. Most of what I'd seen in terms of texts tended to be fairly pricey monographs when starting out, so I'd either borrow stuff from coworkers or my institutional library. There are advanced undergrad/starting grad student texts on x-ray & neutron scattering - e.g., 1 and 2 - but I didn't find out about them until a bit further into my studies.

As might be obvious, there's definitely inspiration and foundational work to be found in the polymer science literature. I went running to Doi and Edwards, for example, when I realized that I needed more background reading in this area, but I'm sure others have their particular favorites in this and related areas.

Insofar as the bio-side of things, well, I've been doing biophysically oriented research since I was an undergrad. I'd suggest a popular biophysics text as well (either Nelson's Biological Physics or Physical Biology of the Cell ) as a starting point/reference. These are aimed towards advanced undergraduates or new grad students as well, mostly due to the interdisciplinary nature of the topics. Speaking of PBoC, one of the authors maintains a publications page where you can check out the PDFs of his group's work.

I think I'll end there, as I think that should be enough pleasure reading for a little while, at least.

> but never demonstrated

What do you even mean by that? Water vapor content in the atmosphere must go up when it gets warmer, it is impossible for it to do anything else. And we measure this increase corresponding to the warming atmosphere.

> above the equator are actually the result of increased water vapor acting as secondary effects of CO2 absorption of IR.

That's not the point at all. The point is when it gets warmer, there is more water vapor in the atmosphere. That doesn't need to be "proven", that's thermodynamics 101.

> Not mine. YOU prove their truth, or quit lying on the internet

Here's your proof.

> You claim CO2 is the main forcing. And it is to a point, but that point has been passed and now it has declining effect.

Look, I have certain sympathy for laymen theory but sometimes it's just too much. What you are trying to say (what exactly are you trying to say?) does not make any sense. Please support your ramblings with literature sources, even denialist sources, or WUWT blogposts so I can at leas start comprehending what your "argument" actually is.

> Now show a 10% decline in overall solar radiation that accounts for your last bit of nonsense. just document it. Better yet give us an explanation of how the Stage 5 problem doesn't kill that little hypothesis of yours.

???

I'm not claiming that this is what happened, I just want to make clear to you that you can see some cooling even when CO2 is increasing, because there are other factors at play as well.

I don't work with structural alloys, but I can suggest several texts that might be of interest to a structural engineer looking to study the lofty, arcane, superior art of metallurgical and materials engineering:

• "Deformation and Fracture Mechanics" Hertzberg et al. [My absolute favorite volume on mechanical behavior of materials. Full of theoretical detail, but also contains numerous case studies, failure analysis, etc. It's written in such a great way as to present deep insights while being readable. If you can't tell, I love this text].
  
  https://smile.amazon.com/Deformation-Fracture-Mechanics-Engineering-Materials/dp/0470527803
  
  
• "Corrosion and Corrosion Control" Revie and Uhlig [Good general text for corrosion science & engineering.]
  
  https://smile.amazon.com/Corrosion-Control-Revie-Winston-Hardcover/dp/B011MCRNHW/
  
  
• "Metals Handbook: Desk Edition" ASM International [Broad reference. Lacks detail on specific subjects, but is a great starting point for research]
  
  https://www.asminternational.org/search/-/journal_content/56/10192/06542G/PUBLICATION
  
  
  If you have more specific interests I can suggest others, but I don't want to bog you down in great texts on other subjects that aren't of interest to you.

> What happens if the crystal is not cubic? I assume the circular dichroism cancels in some way, but why?

Cubic crystals tend not to alleviate the degeneracy of the M_J quantum numbers (I'm just talking about atomic transitions here, not crystal states or molecular states). There are situations where imperfections cause symmetry breaking that leads to alleviation of degeneracy, but not in a perfect crystal. This only applies to insulators by the way. If you have a metallic crystal, free currents in the metal can cause circular dichroism.

> In what way do things get complicated, exactly?

You can have chiral molecules, but floating in solution their relative orientations are random. As a result circular dichroism is not measurable in the ensemble unless you can cause macroscopic alignment of the molecules (like in a chiral nematic liquid crystal).

Also, it's complicated because molecular wavefunctions are not as intuitive as atomic wavefunctions. It's tough to figure out whether a molecule will exhibit certain optical properties without doing molecular orbital calculations. Though, group theory can give you a reasonable intuition for many cases.

> Are there any handles I could use to understand things better?

This is a pretty complex topic that requires an understanding of quantum mechanics and group theory. I didn't fully understand all of this until the last year of my Ph.D. You should take some classes in condensed and soft matter, for starters.

There are some books I guess I could recommend:

• Bransden and Joachain
  
  
• Tinkham
  
  
• Bishop
  
• Powell
  
  
• Henderson and Imbusch (my favorite)
  
  As for what keywords to use in a literature seach. I couldn't tell you. There are quite a few situations that lead to circular dichroism which require different physics to understand. Without knowing exactly what domain you are working in and the details of what you are trying to do, I can only suggest you look for "circular dichroism" on google scholar.
  
  I posted a comment a while ago describing, in detail, my workflow for understanding a topic. Maybe it will help you figure out what you are trying to figure out.

I worked with just this.

I never found a single best book. Use a combination of:

• ASTM Standards
  
  
• Research papers where people worked with specific polymers (I made my own spreadsheets with properties and profiles from various papers and resources)
  
  
• company documentation (suppliers and etc GELEST has some pretty good stuff for silicones)
  
  
• basic polymer science (this book is pretty good: https://www.amazon.com/Essentials-Polymer-Science-Engineering-Painter/dp/1932078754)
  
  
  If you find a single good resource I'd love to know. I ran TGA on silicone and epoxy nanocomposites daily for 3 years. I also conducted thermal conductivity testing with a custom setup. If you know the polymer chemistry you should be able to figure out the TGA profiles. However, thermal analysis alone is not sufficient if you don't know what's in your sample, you need at a minimum also FTIR (and possibly NMR and raman)
  
  I used a combination of FTIR and TGA to answer questions about my materials, determine grafting density (polymers grafted to the ceramic nanoparticles) and more.
  
  Good luck!
  
  
  EDIT: I sifted through stacks of books at our university library and they rarely had what I was looking for. For your case that might be different.

The Mineralogical Society published a book called "Rare Earth Minerals: Chemistry, Origin, and Ore Deposits". I own it and like it, and it sounds closest to what you'd want. My only complaint is that, because each chapter is a paper by a different author, the book doesn't flow that well or build on concepts in a logical manner like most textbooks. However, its still loaded with useful information that any inspiring REE-geoscientist would want to have access to. I'm not sure a "textbook" style publication exists yet for the REE's. REE ore deposits are a very understudied field of ore deposits until recently. There is also "Extractive Metallurgy of the Rare Earths" (which I also own) which has a few great introduction chapters about rare earth chemistry, economics, and mining, but then in subsequent chapters jumps into really detailed metallurgical processes regarding the extraction and processing of rare earths that I am totally clueless on and have no interest in. I'd almost recommend it just for the first few chapters, but the book is pretty pricey.

Edit: Links: http://www.amazon.com/Rare-Earth-Minerals-Chemistry-Mineralogical/dp/0412610302 http://www.amazon.com/Extractive-Metallurgy-Rare-Earths-Gupta/dp/0415333407/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332222202&sr=1-1

Edit: If you have any specific questions feel free to message me. I'm working on my masters studying REE ore deposits at the moment. I'm definitely not an expert on REE's (yet?), but I may be able to answer certain questions or forward them to someone who can.

By chemist, do you mean undergraduate or postgraduate? What year of study are they in? It'd be difficult to study statistical mechanics from scratch; make sure the following prerequisites are in order:

• Mathematical methods including multivariable calculus, vector calculus, differential equations and introductory (but still rigorous) probability theory. Combinatorial methods can and will help, too.
  
• Classical mechanics, including analytical mechanics. A lot of important results in statistical mechanics correspond directly to what you find in classical mechanics.
  
• Exposure to thermodynamics is essential. As a chemist, your friend will almost definitely have this.
  
• Quantum mechanics, the ideas of which are highly important for quantum statistical mechanics. Of course, if your friend would rather stick to classical statistical mechanics, this doesn't have to be deeply studied. I'd imagine that being a chemist, your friend has seen some quantum mechanics before anyhow.
  
  For an introductory level book, I quite enjoyed Bowley and Sanchez. They go through relevant ideas in probability already and the appendix covers up some of the mathematical prerequisites. Further down the line, Huang is an excellent book: it is significantly more advanced than the previous, but the contents is both broad and detailed (I still refer to it for topics like the 2D Ising model). At the same time, you could also consider Volume 5 of the famous Course of Theoretical Physics by Landau and Lifshitz. The Course is famously hardcore, but it imparts mastery like nothing else.

Hertzberg is a great deformation and fracture book, definitely recommend owning this one.

Also, [Honeycombe and Bhadeshia] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000S1L6IQ/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_1?pf_rd_p=1535523722&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=0750680849&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1T4JXHZ7FKY6AGYPF3KH) have a great book on ferrous alloys. You should be able to find a pdf of this one, let me know if you can't.

As far as the others (online resources/organizations), I can't really comment... I just used these two textbooks in my grad-level fracture and ferrous alloys classes and quite enjoyed both books.

Entanglement entropy in spin liquids is a kinda narrow and recent niche, so I'm not sure if you'll find much outside of research papers. For condensed matter in general, the canonical recommendation is Fetter and Walecka - it's a bit old, but it would be a good book to bridge the gap from HEP to condensed matter.

Edit: Another good book in the spirit of F&W is the one by Negele. It might be a better fit if you feel that the first one is too basic or shallow.

It’s not an article, but I’m reading Materials modelling using density function theory. It’s a great introduction into density function theory and the maths that under pins it. The possible applications and the ability to greatly reduce the cost of research is amazing. Chapter one to four are my favourite. Materials modelling

There is a new text by van Santen entitled "Modern Heterogeneous Catalysis: An Introduction". It covers a ton of ground and really gives a great overview of a wide range of modern catalytic reactions that are industrially relevant. I encourage you to check out the table of contents in the free preview to see if it's up your alley. The book tries to give a broad overview of the field as a whole that you could only learn from someone that is an expert in the field.

Another text that is similar in scope is Chorkendorff's "Concepts of Modern Catalysis and Kinetics". This one has a bit more background but isn't as much of a survey of the field as van Santen's text is.

Someone below has mentioned "Fundamental Concepts in Heterogeneous Catalysis" by Norskov. This is a very accessible book but is mainly targeted at the computational catalysis folk (and if this were of interest, I'd also recommend RSC's "Computational Catalysis").

Yeah. Being brittle means a material will break without plastic deformation. Plastic deformation is deformation where material is permanently deformed but doesn't break (think bending a paperclip vs breaking chalk).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fracture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ductility

Those might help (I just skimmed them briefly but I think they'd be a decent overview).

http://www.amazon.com/Materials-Science-Engineering-An-Introduction/dp/0470556730

That's a good pretty textbook if you want to learn what a typical mechanical engineering program covers.

For an undergraduate approach I recommend Schroeder. However, this book starts with thermal physics which is, well, a bit boring ;). The math is not hard, but developing that 'physics instinct' can sometimes be challenging.

For a more advanced, but very nice and systematic text, I recommend Toda, Kubo, et al.. Another graduate text is Huang.

There are also the books by Feynman and Landau and Lifshitz Pt. 1 (Pt. 2 is quantum field theory, which at this stage you probably will want to avoid).

Fun fact: weathering steel doesn't do it's "weathering" thing particularly well in humid/water rich environments. The DOT my company works for is spending a lot of money zone painting (painting the areas around splices, bearings, and beam ends) weathering steel bridges.

IF you can find a section in the handbook that meets your span and LL+superimposed DL (usually the deck), then the prestressing strands will be included along with that. This is the book I'm talking about. Otherwise, you'll have to do the prestressing calculations by hand. But with concrete, you don't have to worry about the welds, local buckling, and lateral stiffeners.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Introductory-Statistical-Mechanics-Roger-Bowley/0198505760

Introductory Statistical Mechanics 2nd Edition, Roger Bowley


Whatever you are told to purchase by your instructor, buy this too.