Material
hideMaterial is synonymous with Substance, and is anything made of matter - hydrogen, air and water are all examples of materials. Sometimes the term Material is used more narrowly to refer to substances or components with certain physical properties which are used as inputs to production or manufacturing. In this sense, materials are the pieces required to make something else, from buildings and art to stars and computers.
A material can be anything: a finished product in its own right or an unprocessed raw material. Raw materials are first extracted or harvested from the earth and divided into a form that can be easily transported and stored, then processed to produce semi-finished materials. These can be input into a new cycle of production and finishing processes to create finished materials, ready for distribution, construction, and consumption.
An example of a raw material is cotton, which is harvested from plants, and can then be processed into thread (also considered a raw material), which can then be woven into cloth, a semi-finished material. Cutting and sewing the fabric turns it into a garment, which is a finished material. Steelmaking is another example—raw materials in the form of ore are mined, refined and processed into steel, a semi-finished material. Steel is then used as an input in many other industries to make finished products.
For more information about Material, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
News tagged with materials
New exotic material could revolutionize electronics
Jun 15, 2009 |
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Move over, silicon -- it may be time to give the Valley a new name. Physicists at the Department of Energy's (DOE) SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and Stanford University have confirmed the existence ...
Major breakthrough in lithium battery technology reported
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
May 18, 2009 |
4.9 / 5 (49) |
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An NSERC-funded lab at the University Of Waterloo has laid the groundwork for a lithium battery that can store and deliver more than three times the power of conventional lithium ion batteries.
Metal-Air Battery Could Store 11 Times More Energy than Lithium-Ion
Nov 05, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A spinoff company from Arizona State University plans to build a new battery with an energy density 11 times greater than that of lithium-ion batteries for just one-third the cost. With a ...
Superconductor magnet spacecraft heat shield being developed
Nov 26, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- European space agencies and an aerospace giant are developing a new re-entry heat shield that will use superconductor magnets to generate a magnetic field strong enough to deflect the superhot ...
Carbon nanoballs as data storage units
Sep 01, 2009 |
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Small, smaller, "nano" data storage! Interest is growing in the use of metallofullerenes - carbon “cages” with embedded metallic compounds - as materials for miniature data storage devices. Researchers at ...
Why Does Water Expand When it Cools? A New Explanation
Jul 17, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Most of us, when we take our first science classes, learn that when things cool down, they shrink. (When they heat up, we learn, they usually expand.) However, water seems to be the exception ...
Liquid Battery Offers Promising Solar Energy Storage Technique
Mar 06, 2009 |
3.9 / 5 (39) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the biggest challenges currently facing large-scale solar energy technology is finding an effective way to store the energy, which is essential for using the electricity at night or ...
New nanocrystals show potential for cheap lasers, new lighting
May 10, 2009 |
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For more than a decade, scientists have been frustrated in their attempts to create continuously emitting light sources from individual molecules because of an optical quirk called "blinking," but now scientists ...
Ultra-Long Carbon Nanotubes Could Serve as Future Transmission Lines
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Nov 10, 2009 |
4.9 / 5 (27) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- When it comes to carbon nanotubes, the majority of research so far has focused on small-scale applications. But now, a team of researchers from Rice University has created carbon nanotubes ...
Single-Molecule Magnets Open New Door for Information Technology
Mar 09, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Recent research by scientists in Italy and France shows that that single molecules have the ability to store information via their magnetic state. Their work is a first step toward a new generation ...
Discovery of an Unexpected Boost for Solar Water-Splitting Cells
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Apr 22, 2009 |
5 / 5 (22) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A research team from Northeastern University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology has discovered, serendipitously, that a residue of a process used to build arrays of titania ...
Can Recycling Be Bad for the Environment?
Jul 14, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- By now, nearly everyone knows that it is important to recycle. It helps the environment. Even my six-year-old knows that. But what if it doesn't? While it seems pretty straightforward, in ...
New battery material could lead to rapid recharging of many devices
Mar 11, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- MIT engineers have created a kind of beltway that allows for the rapid transit of electrical energy through a well-known battery material, an advance that could usher in smaller, lighter batteries ...
Nanopillars Promise Cheap, Efficient, Flexible Solar Cells
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Jul 09, 2009 |
4 / 5 (23) |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley have demonstrated a way to fabricate efficient solar cells ...
Scientists Create Light-Bending Nanoparticles
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Mar 03, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Metallic nanoparticles and other structures can manipulate light in ways that are not possible with conventional optical materials. In a recent example of this, Rice University researchers ...
