Energy & Green Tech

Unveiling a new class of synthetic fuels

Researchers from RWTH, the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, and ETH Zurich have made considerable advancements in synthetic fuels. Their study, which has the potential to revolutionize clean transportation, ...

Energy & Green Tech

Using sodium to make more sustainable batteries

The element lithium is used widely in batteries because it results in long-lasting, stable energy storage. However, it's a finite resource, so researchers are hard at work trying to identify alternate materials to use in ...

Software

Redesigning videoconferencing for, and by, people who stutter

As a former tech lead at Meta, Shaomei Wu, Ph.D. '12, found she had to work extra hard to get her points across in large online meetings. She stutters, which combined with her gender and racial identity, made it challenging ...

Energy & Green Tech

New material paves the way to on-chip energy harvesting

Researchers from Germany, Italy, and the UK have achieved a major advance in the development of materials suitable for on-chip energy harvesting. By composing an alloy made of silicon, germanium and tin, they were able to ...

Business

How to increase the rate of plastics recycling

While recycling systems and bottle deposits have become increasingly widespread in the U.S., actual rates of recycling are "abysmal," according to a team of MIT researchers who studied the rates for recycling of PET, the ...

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Material

Material 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.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA