Building Knowledge in Materials Science
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Building Knowledge in Materials Science Caroline Baillie1, Jonas Emanuelsson and Ference Marton 1 Dept. Materials, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, Prince Consort Rd. London, SW72BP, [email protected], 01715946805 (t) , 01715843194 (f) Dept. of Education and Educational Research, Gothenburg University, Gothenburg ABSTRACT The present paper discusses the outcomes of research exploring the formation of knowledge in one area of materials science, that of the ‘interface’ in composite materials. A series of interviews have been conducted with researchers from eight different countries, all involved in investigating a similar issue. Questions were aimed at exploring their understanding of certain key concepts. The interviews were transcribed and data analysed using a phenomenographic approach. Having a better understanding of the way in which the knowledge is understood by different researchers gives us a new way of helping students to approach their own understanding of the concepts. Students can see the concepts from many perspectives and realise that there is not one way to understand a scientific ‘fact’. This paper discusses the possibilities that this approach holds for Materials Science Education. INTRODUCTION The interface is one of the most important aspects of a reinforced composite material. It is the ‘interface’ which allows for the transfer of stress from the matrix material, to the reinforcing material, so that it can do its job. This sounds very simple in essence. We teach students about ‘interfacial adhesion’ and how we would like the interface to be strong, for composites to have high static strength, as well as fatigue strength. Unfortunately, if the interfacial bonding is too strong, this tends to mean that any deviant crack, will pass straight through the material, breaking fibres as it goes, without the need to meander along a pathway between fibre and matrix, (debonding). If the interface is duly weakened then the crack will happily propagate at 90o and wander all over the material, absorbing healthy quantities of energy and thus toughening our composite. What we tend not to mention to students is that within the research area of interfaces in composite materials,there is a constant concern that we don’t know very much and are not getting very far in sorting out this obvious dichotomy. The present study was originally initiated in order to take a step back and look in a fresh way at the issues facing the interface community. A research specialisation ‘phenomenography’ was selected for this study which aims at revealing the qualitatively different ways in which people make sense of various phenomena in the world around them. Experts in the field were interviewed about their understandings of the phenomenon 'interface’. There were two proposed outcomes intended for this work. The first was to develop the commmunity’s shared understanding of the phenomenon in question. This work has been published in a technical
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