Class takes useful look at materials

Many University students are puzzled by the everyday. And rather than pondering the laws of load bearing bridges and magnetic media, Charles McMahon has found that students are more interested in learning how their bicycles and walkmen operate. In the Material Science and Engineering chairperson's introductory class, students gain an exciting understanding of "a normally boring" subject. "The bike is a mental framework for organization," McMahon said last week. Students can "walk out and use" the information that they learn. According to Management and Technology senior Brian Carroll, one of the 20 students taking the class, the course covers materials that people "encounter in everyday life." But according to McMahon, despite the student's familiarity with the objects, academically they are getting "a workout." Students in the course said the class stresses student-faculty interaction. "[McMahon] is one of the nicest professors at the University [who] expresses interest in the students and [their] learning the material," Carroll said. The course was invented six years ago by Materials Science and Engineering Professor Charles Graham and McMahon. Graham came up with the walkman idea because it is easier to remember magnetic material science in terms of something practical to students, according to McMahon, who developed the bicycle idea. When the course first began, a standard text was used but they were deemed "hopeless" by McMahon because the class follows a different syllabus than conventional material science courses. Next year McMahon said he hopes to develop "another layer," noting that many of the concepts are difficult to visualize. Included in these plans are two to three-minute animated video clips. McMahon also said that the class is not designed to be exclusively for engineers and encourages students from across the University -- in economics, politics or city planning -- to enroll. "It's practical to anybody," McMahon said. "It only needs a high school education."