MEng Materials Science and Engineering with Textiles Technology / Course details

Year of entry: 2024

Course unit details:
Computing & Communication

Course unit fact file
Unit code MATS15501
Credit rating 20
Unit level Level 4
Teaching period(s) Semester 1
Offered by Department of Materials
Available as a free choice unit? No

Overview

The unit provides a basic introduction into Materials Science and Engineering, followed by the development of   practical skills such as scientific report writing, computing, experimental analysis, design problems and group work. 

Aims

  1. Introduce students to materials science as a science and engineering discipline;
  2. Introduce transferable computational skills required for general scientific enquiry and some specific to the materials discipline.
  3. Reinforce essential experimental skills for Materials Scientists.
  4. Develop good practice in the communication of scientific ideas via reports and presentations.
  5. Introduce students to the university’s systems for accessing scientific literature and referencing and develop an awareness of academic malpractice.
  6. Develop analytical skills to analyse and draw critical conclusions from an experiment based on logical arguments from your own observations, previous literature and a knowledge of the accuracy and precision of the methods.
  7. Encourage self-motivation through group work and student-led learning.

 

Learning outcomes

A greater depth of the learning outcomes will be covered in the following sections:

  • Knowledge and understanding
  • Intellectual skills
  • Practical skills
  • Transferable skills and personal qualities

Teaching and learning methods

Lectures, labs demonstration, tutorials, computer-based exercises.

 

Knowledge and understanding

  1. Show an awareness of breadth of materials and biomedical materials science
  2. Demonstrate an understanding of experimental design
  3. Understand simple programming concepts like variable assignment and iteration
  4. Demonstrate an understanding of error handling 
  5. Knowledge of academic malpractice and ethics
 

Intellectual skills

  1. Demonstrate awareness of significance of measurement errors 
  2. Develop the ability to plan a solution to a technical/scientific problem using computation 
  3. Learn to assess, analyse and evaluate data
 

Practical skills

  1. Proficiency with library and information sources. 
  2. Know how to use Jupyter notebook and Python to analyse and visualise data and carry out simple analysis 
  3. Develop and execute simple routines using Python
 

Transferable skills and personal qualities

  1. Prepare technical reports 
  2. Presentations 
  3. Obtain and interpret information from differing media/sources 
  4. Gain an awareness of team roles and responsibilities 
  5. Conduct group and individual projects 
  6. Present technical/scientific information effectively
 

Assessment methods

Method Weight
Written assignment (inc essay) 100%

Feedback methods

Feedback given (written)

Recommended reading

Engineering materials 1: an introduction to properties, applications and design” M.F. Ashby and D.R.H. Jones, 2005.

“Materials science and engineering” W.D. Callister, 2011.

http://www.scipy-lectures.org/ 

https://github.com/jrjohansson/scientific-python-lectures

 

Study hours

Scheduled activity hours
Lectures 32
Independent study hours
Independent study 168

Teaching staff

Staff member Role
Kun Yan Unit coordinator

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