What materials science and metallurgical engineering actually cover, the structure-processing-property-performance relationship, a roadmap of this 21-item program, and the atomic bonding types — ionic, covalent, metallic, and van der Waals — that predict how every material class in this program behaves.
Every property this program covers — a ceramic's brittleness, a metal's ductility, a polymer's temperature sensitivity — traces back to how its atoms are bonded together. This module opens the program by explaining what materials science and metallurgical engineering actually cover, previewing the full 21-item curriculum, and then building the atomic-bonding foundation — ionic, covalent, metallic, and van der Waals bonding, and the electron-configuration basics behind them — that every later module assumes you already understand.
By the end of this module you should be able to predict a material's general mechanical behavior and failure mode directly from its bonding type, before ever looking up a specific number for it — the same reasoning Module 2's crystal structures and Module 4's metal alloy systems both build on directly.