PROPERTIES OF MATERIALS (INTRODUCTION)
PROPERTIES OF MATERIALS INTRODUCTION The aim of this course is to provide student architects with a fair knowledge of building materials in common use. Knowing the building materials available is not sufficient enough to aid one in making a good choice in the event of building specification, one needs to know the chemical and physical structure of such building materials and the functional requirements they proffer in order to make good choices. Physical materials exist basically in three states: solids, liquids and gases. An object is to be a solid when it maintains its shape and size. Solids exhibit a regular arrangement of atomic, ionic, or molecular particles, this is to say that solids objects have crystalline structure. Building materials could either be stone, wood, metal, ceramics, rubber, polymer, clay glass etc. HISTORY OF MATERIALS DEVELOPMENT People have constructed buildings and other structures since prehisto...