Materials Science Laboratory

The Materials Science Laboratory is primarily used for the laboratory portion of Materials Science II. It consists of the equipment and space for three different experiments. The major pieces of equipment are a 10,000 lb capacity Instron tensile and compression testing machine, a Rockwell hardness tester, a mechanically vented hood and specimen polishing wheels. The equipment is meant for student’s hands-on use, rather than for demonstrations that students only observe. Using the equipment the students perform tensile tests and hardness tests. They also create a two component phase diagram and polish and etch samples to observe grain structure as a function of different annealing conditions.