Living in a material world: the importance of materials science and engineering

Suitable for 14-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5 physics, maths, chemistry and engineering.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks:
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Discover Materials, an organisation promoting the field of materials science and engineering. From lunar homes constructed from moondust and astronaut urine, to bamboo cricket bats, explore the incredible applications of and opportunities in materials science and engineering.

• This resource also contains interview with members of the Discover Materials team and offers an insight into careers in materials science and engineering. If your students have questions for any of the team, they can send them to them online. All they need to do is to go to the article online (see the Futurum link below), scroll down to the end and type in the question(s). The team will reply!

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on the applications of materials science and engineering and challenges them to design an experiment to investigate the material properties of chocolate.

This resource was first published on Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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