Material Science
Testing & Designing Material Behavior - Metals, Ceramics, & Polymers
Skills
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Excel to plot and manipulate data
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Calipers to measure the gauge length of a dog bone specimen
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Instron Machine
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Strain Guage
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Charpy Impact Tester
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Hardness Tester
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Writing Lab Reports with abstract, experimental methods, plots, figures with descriptions, data discrepancy, conclusion, and sources
In the College of San Mateo, I had the experience of learning about Material Science theory and testing the theory with physical dogbone samples or Charpy impact specimens.
In class, I learned about failure mechanics, failure surfaces, the difference between brittle and ductile failure, the important information in stress vs strain curves, annealing/grain growth, fatigue, annealing metals, strengthening techniques, etc.
We also had a design challenge. It was to design brass with a specific gauge length, ductility, and yield stress. My group was given 1 change to anneal and 2 chances to cold roll. More is described in the link below.
Fortunately, I tested metals, ceramics, and polymers based on ASTM standards: tensile tests with an Instron machine, Charpy impact machine tests, and hardness tests. I wrote lab reports that included extracted material properties and stress vs strain curves.
Experimenting with Properties of Gelatin
Skills Learned
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Researching through public academic paper
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Creating silicone molds to create dogbone specimens
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Understanding polymer stress vs strain curve
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Observing fatigue/fracture failure with a compression test
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Using ASTM standards to design our compression test
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Creating a formal lab report
The purpose of my research partner and my experiment is to experimentally find the material properties of hydrolyzed gelatin. Specifically, the elastic modulus, ultimate compression test, and ultimate tensile stress.
Our idea for experimenting on gelatin came from watching the video from Youtube channel, Heopop titled 젤라틴99.9% 절대 안깨지는 무적의 푸딩을 만들어보았다! 이거 탱탱볼 아닙니까?!ㅋ - 허팝. The title of the video translates to “I made an invincible 99% Gelatin Solid!!”. The video showed the fascinating phenomenon of gelatin making orange juice into a seemingly stronger material. His gelatin cup samples were subjected to being hit with a pickaxe and were put through a compression test.
We wanted to use standardized material science procedures, based on ASTM standards, to replicate his experiment in a more scientific way. We believed we might find useful information about gelatin that might help us use gelatin in a wide array of applications.