Engineering design and construction greatly depend on proper selection and use of materials. Therefore, all engineers need to have a sound knowledge of materials to achieve success in their endeavors.

In order to furnish civil engineering students with the necessary preliminary knowledge, there are two compulsory materials courses one being designed for second year and the other for third year students in the Civil Engineering Department of Middle East Technical University (METU). In addition to these, some elective materials courses are introduced to the fourth year students.

The first of the two compulsory courses, taught at the second year, is named “Material Science” and the following one, taught at the third year, “Materials of Construction” which covers the properties of some widely used construction materials one by one. “Materials Science” is based on physics, chemistry, and knowledge on the internal structure of materials.

Thus it is a general key to the basic structure of materials for finding out why and how materials perform differently under various conditions. Therefore, it is vitally important that engineering students know how materials behave in general, and correctly evaluate the behavior of each construction material in use.