Unit 1: Materials and Structure

This Nuffield Advanced Physics Unit was designed as an introduction to the course. The authors wanted to capture the students' imagination right from the beginning, and so they chose for the first Unit a relatively complex topic of considerable practical importance but treated it relatively simply. The hope was that there would be quick rewards for students, and also that the Unit would illustrate some of the recurring issues of the course: arguments about models, understanding macroscopic behaviour in microscopic terms, and applying knowledge from one part of physics to tackle problems in another.

Contents of the Students’ book
*To the student
*Summary of Unit 1
*Questions
Part One The variety and behaviour of materials
Part Two X-rays and structure
Part Three Stretching and breaking
*Answers
*Materials and their uses
*Carbon fibres
*Theories true or not?
*Books for Unit 1
*Terms and equations used in Unit 1

Experiments suggested for the Unit
1.1 Handling useful materials
1.2 A raft of equal sized bubbles
1.3 Stacking spheres
1.4 Microwave diffraction by a polystyrene ball 'crystal'
1.5 Microwaves page
1.6 Bragg 'reflection' of microwaves
1.7 Feeling materials stretch and break
1.8 Measurements of the Young modulus and breaking strength
1.9 Splitting of stretched rubber
1.10 Bubble raft model of dislocations
1.11 Cracks and brittle fracture
1.12 Samples of composite materials