CORE-Materials Project Blog

Graphene can distil alcohol - study

2012-01-31T12:35:00.000Z

Membranes based on the "miracle material" graphene can be used to distil alcohol, according to a new study in Science journal.

Andrei Geim and Konstantin Novoselov from the University of Manchester were awarded 2010's Nobel Prize in physics for their discovery, outlined in a scientific paper in 2004.

New interactive Flash Movies released from the DoITPoMs.

2012-01-16T12:02:00.001Z

We have published a number of newly released interactive Flash Movies from the DoITPoMs Teaching and Learning Packages (TLPs)at the University of Cambridge. The DoITPoMS TLPs each focus on a common materials science topic met with in undergraduate teaching and learning. Many of theTLPs include video clips from experiments, along with standard features such as an introduction, summary, questions and answers, references for further study, and links to the MATTER Glossary of Materials Science.

The animations are now available for downloading and running from your local system under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share-Alike license.

Click here to view the Teaching and Learning Packages (TLPs) from the DoITPoMs.

CORE-Materials site is restored now

2011-10-10T12:52:00.002+01:00

The CORE-Materials site was affected by a power outage at the University of Liverpool, following a major environmental issue in the Brownlow Hill Building machine room overnight. The service is now restored back to normal.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused by the unavailability of CORE-Materials over last three days.

University of Liverpool major power outage on 7 of October 2011

2011-10-07T17:20:00.000+01:00

Following a major environmental issue in the Brownlow Hill Building machine room overnight, CORE-Materials and other our servers were affected by a power outage at the University of Liverpool and will hopefully be restored on Monday.
We apologise for the inconvenience caused by the unavailability of these services over the days ahead.

Quasicrystals

2011-10-05T17:11:00.000+01:00

The 2011 Nobel prize for chemistry has been awarded to Professor Daniel Shechtman for his discovery of the structure of quasicrystals. We are putting together a small package of open educational resources relating to quasicrystals for those of you wishing to use them in your teaching or learning.

Atomic model of Ag-Al quasicrystal
By AMES lab., US Department of Energy
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Forming and Testing Techniques for Composite Materials

2011-09-16T15:15:00.001+01:00

Two series of powerpoint slides and images showing forming and testing techniques for the characterisation of composite materials have been released recently. The slides are adapted from the University of Liverpool "Composite Materials" lectures [MATS311] and "Advanced Composite Materials" lectures [MATS411] by Prof. W. Cantwell.

The series are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license.

Two resources on sustainability from Granta Design just added

2011-03-17T13:43:00.000Z

Granta Design Ltd has donated two resources on the topic of sustainability created by Mike Ashby, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge. The first is a video of Mike Ashby doing a simple eco audit case study and the second is a powerpoint lecture unit that the case study comes from. They are both released under Creative Commons licenses.

Materials in Cricket

2011-03-09T17:52:00.003Z

To celebrate the 2011 Cricket World Cup currently being played in Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka, we have added a number of resources relating to the use of materials in cricket, including bats, balls and protective gear. Howzat?

Photo CC BY-SA by Powru

Addition of some copyrighted resources

2011-03-09T17:40:00.001Z

In addition to our collection of Open Educational Resources (OERs), we have now started to add links to a number of external online resources that are subject to copyright. These resources will always appear at the end of any results listing in the Resource Finder and are clearly identified by colour and by the © logo. Although we remain committed to adding further OERs to the CORE-Materials database, we do hope you will find the additional copyright resources listings useful.

Composites and plastics properties from SubsTech

2011-03-09T10:46:00.000Z

Two packages from SubsTech have been released: Ceramic Matrix Composites and Thermoplastics. They contain properties data sheets on these materials and are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license. The properties include: density, modulus of elasticity, tensile strength, compressive strength, shear strength, thermal expansion (at 20 °C), thermal conductivity, glass transition temperature, maximum work temperature, electric resistivity and dielectric constant.

SubsTech (Substances & Technologies) is a free and open knowledge source in Materials Engineering. The site contains a wide range of illustrated articles on metals, ceramics, polymers, composites and fluids including fundamentals of materials engineering, materials properties, applications and manufacturing technologies.

Energy Production & Conservation from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

2011-03-04T14:24:00.001Z

Energy Production & Conservation package from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has been released recently. It contains images on energy production and conservation created at PNNL, which are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license.

PNNL is one of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) ten national laboratories, which performs research in energy, environment, and national security fields.

Nuclear Energy and Nanophotonics from Argonne National Laboratory

2011-03-03T15:39:00.002Z

Two packages from Argonne National Laboratory have been released: Nuclear Energy and Nanophotonics. They contain images on different aspects of nuclear energy research and nanophotonics correspondingly and are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.

Argonne National Laboratory conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every area of science and technology.

Animation of aluminium extrusion process

2011-02-08T13:35:00.001Z

We have added an animation illustrating a complete cycle of aluminium extrusion production, including die heating and transfer, billet heating, transfer to press, extrusion, cooling, sawing, stretching, stacking and ageing.

The animation is available in Flash format (SWF) and as a video on YouTube and is released for re-use under a Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike license.

A course on nanosciene and technology from NanoHUB.org

2011-02-02T14:32:00.001Z

"Introduction to Nano Science and Technology" package from NanoHUB.org has been released. This is a comprehensive course consisting of presentations, notes and flash animations with audio narritives. The course covers topics in fundamental nanoscale science, plus an overview of areas in nanotechnology.

NanoHUB.org packages are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license. NanoHUB.org is a resource for nanoscience and technology, created by the NSF-funded Network for Computational Nanotechnology.

Views of TALAT lectures pass 200,000 mark

2011-01-21T14:22:00.000Z

151 of TALAT lectures from TALAT package on CORE-materials have received number of reads of 107,296 on Slideshare and 97,016 on Scribd respectively. TALAT - Training in Aluminium Application Technologies - is the most comprehensive collection of aluminium training materials for engineers and researchers in industry and universities.

Material Selection Case Studies from Granta Design released

2010-12-17T15:36:00.008Z

A set of seven interactive material selection case studies, which use performance indices, has been just released. They are based on projects in the book "Materials Selection for Mechanical Design" by Mike Ashby, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge and the CES EduPack, a materials education resource created by Granta Design Ltd. The animations are available under a Creative Commons Attribution -NonCommercial - ShareAlike license.

Two modules from OpenLearn released

2010-12-16T13:08:00.007Z

"OpenLearn: Manufacturing Processes" and "OpenLearn: Introduction to Polymers" packages have been released.

All OpenLearn packages are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike license. OpenLearn gives you free access to learning materials from The Open University.

Teaching Engineering textbook by Peter J. Goodhew now released

2010-11-04T16:44:00.001Z

We have now released Teaching Engineering textbook by Peter J. Goodhew under a BY-SA Creative Commons license.

This book is aimed at practising teachers of engineering and physical sciences at undergraduate or taught postgraduate level. It is intended to be based on clear research evidence and to explain as clearly as possible what the educational terminology actually means for the lecturer.

The book can be also viewed on Scribd and in the UKCME site.

Embed code for aluMATTER Flash movies

2010-11-01T17:50:00.007Z

We have added a new feature that allows you to <embed> individual aluMATTER Flash movies in your own websites, blogs, VLEs and PLEs.

All you have to do is simply copy and paste a block of code from the relevant resource detail page on CORE-Materials. For an example of this, go to this page and click the <Embed> button near the bottom. Try copying the code and pasting it into your website or blog. It should appear at the correct size.

Here is an example of an embedded movie...

...and here is the embed code:

<object height="300" width="330"><param name="movie" value="http://core.materials.ac.uk/repository/alumatter/processing/forming/sheet-formingProcSpringB.swf"></param><param name="base" value="http://core.materials.ac.uk/repository/alumatter/processing/forming/">
</param><embed width="330" height="300" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://core.materials.ac.uk/repository/alumatter/processing/forming/sheet-formingProcSpringB.swf" base="http://core.materials.ac.uk/repository/alumatter/processing/forming/"></embed></object>

Embedding resources from third party sites is already a popular feature on YouTube (videos), Flickr (images) and Scribd (documents), but until now has not been possible for our interactive Flash content. Enjoy!

Materials breakthrough - resources on graphene added

2010-10-06T16:40:00.020+01:00

We have added resources on a graphene, a one-atom-thick film of carbon whose strength, flexibility and electrical conductivity have opened up new horizons for high-tech applications. The ultra-thin material could help develop super fast electronics. It was first discovered by scientists in Condensed Matter Physics Group, The University of Manchester, who received yesterday the Nobel Prize in Physics for this new class of materials.

Steel Plate Rolling for Engineering Students @ Liverpool University

2010-10-05T11:29:00.003+01:00

A short video has been added describing how an interactive plate rolling simulation, freely available at steeluniversity.org, was used with 2nd year Engineering undergraduates at the University of Liverpool.

The students, working in groups, had to compete to supply plates for three sections of an offshore wind turbine tower at the correct specification and at the lowest possible cost. From the customer's specification, the students had to:

calculate the required plate sizes for each section of the tower
select an appropriate steel grade (composition) and rolling schedule to achieve the required mechanical properties
work out the suitable slab sizes, bearing in mind that some end and edge trims must be made after rolling
roll the plates using the interactive controls within the simulation

At the end of each run, the students were presented with test-house and production reports, stating whether the required mechanical properties were met, and also the size, number and cost of saleable plates.

Each result was recorded on the database, allowing the module tutors to monitor the progress of each group.

TALAT lectures promoted to the Rising List on Scribd

2010-10-04T13:52:00.000+01:00

Five TALAT lectures from TALAT package on CORE-materials have been promoted to the Rising List on Scribd. Documents in the Rising List are those that receive a very large number of reads, comments and positive ratings within a short period of time. Rising documents are presented in the Scribd's Rising List on the Explore page.

Definitions for the classification terms are added to the repository

2010-09-22T15:59:00.001+01:00

Every classification used in the CORE-Materials repository of open educational resources has its definition now. It appears in the top of the list of resources when the corresponding filter is selected. The total list of terms in the classification tree is 243.

A set of common equations used in Materials Science released

2010-09-14T16:37:00.001+01:00

A set of common equations used in Materials Science has been released. These fifty equations cover a range of topics in Materials Science such as diffusion, phase transformations, recovery & recrystallization, deformation, Young’s modulus, mechanical and electrical testing, heat and surface treatment, corrosion, composites, polymers, lasers and many others. The equations are available under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

The algorithm by which results are ordered has been changed

2010-09-09T14:52:00.000+01:00

We have changed the algorithm by which results are ordered. For a given search term, results are ordered in the priority Title, Keywords, Description and Category.
For resources having the same 'relevance', those with the more open licenses are displayed first.
Packages and equations are always displayed above other resources.

Two more modules from aluMATTER have been released

2010-08-11T13:19:00.001+01:00

aluMATTER: Corrosion and Corrosion Control and aluMATTER: Machining of Aluminium packages have been released, making a total of ten collections of interactive Flash movies from the award-winning aluMATTER website. The modules, freely available for download at core.materials.ac.uk, cover a range of areas on aluminium science and technology, including phase diagrams, crystallographic texture, strengthening and softening mechanisms, mechanical and surface properties of aluminium, corrosion, forming and machining in aluminium, and structural applications of aluminium.

All aluMATTER packages are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Non-Derivative license. aluMATTER has been developed by the European Aluminium Association.

STEM OER Guidance Wiki has now been released

2010-07-22T13:16:00.000+01:00

The STEM OER Wiki has now been released. This work constitutes a collection of guidance documents on all aspects of Open Educational Resources (OER) prepared by the STEM project teams from a number of Higher Education Academy/JISC OER pilot projects. Wiki contains an overview of OER, information on intellectual property rights, packaging and uploading resources, evaluating your resources and ensuring their promotion and sustainability.

Public domain educational resources

2010-07-19T16:32:00.000+01:00

We are currently working on the site to add support for resources available in the public-domain, i.e. free from copyright or other restriction. We have identified numerous resources relating to materials science and engineering in Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and other locations.

Common Equations in Materials Science

2010-07-05T11:35:00.001+01:00

We are currently working on releasing a selection of most common equations used in Materials Science. These equations and definitions of all the classifications used in the CORE-Materials repository of open educational resources will compliment the existing database. The equations and definitions will be available under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

aluMATTER: Mechanical Properties of Aluminium now released

2010-06-09T16:55:00.004+01:00

aluMATTER: Mechanical Properties of Aluminium has just been released, making a total of eight collections of interactive Flash movies from the award-winning aluMATTER website, freely available for download at core.materials.ac.uk.

The mechanical properties of a material describe its response to applied loads. For many applications, the ability to support a load, or withstand an impact, without excessive deflection or failure is essential. Mechanical properties are therefore often a critical factor in materials selection. This package introduces the important mechanical properties of aluminium alloys and compares aluminium with other materials.

All aluMATTER packages are released under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Non-Derivative license. aluMATTER has been developed by the European Aluminium Association.

Featured Resource in Jorum - ECorr: Introduction to Corrosion

2010-05-25T12:02:00.000+01:00

ECorr: Introduction to Corrosion, released by CORE-Materials was chosen as a Featured Resource in Jorum main page. This interactive resource is a first case study in a series of six.

It gives a brief introduction to the subject of corrosion and helps in learning how to navigate and make use of the subsequent case studies. The series is produced under partnership of University of Manchester, University of Leeds,University of Nottingham and University of Glasgow, and released under Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike license.

Photos of crystal defects illustrated in brick walls released

2010-05-12T12:29:00.001+01:00

We have just released a collection of photographs by Peter Goodhew, The University of Liverpool, under Attribution Creative Commons license.

The set includes images on how crystal defects and other concepts of crystallography can be illustrated in natural and manmade structures.

View the collection on Flickr.

Largest collection in JorumOpen

2010-05-05T15:08:00.001+01:00

CORE-Materials uploaded more than 1000 resources to Jorum Open, contirbuting into HE - Engineering collection. This makes this collection the largest one within Jorum Open.

Find and share free learning and teaching resources available to all which have been deposited by UK HE and FE Institutions. All resources within JorumOpen are available under a Creative Commons Licence.

Guidance Notes on Releasing, Uploading and Downloading OERs

2010-04-29T12:23:00.000+01:00

The CORE-Materials Team has prepared sets of guidance notes on:

Releasing Open Educational resources, including how to clear a resource for open release, dealing with 3rd party content, Creative Commons licensing and how to upload/download resources to Flickr, Scribd, Slideshare and YouTube.
Ideas on how to construct a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) using Netvibes.
Downloading and using the re-packaged interactive Flash content from CORE-Materials.

Customised RSS Feeds

2010-04-23T08:45:00.015+01:00

Did you know that you can now create customised feeds that display the latest resources based on your specific search criteria? After you enter one or more search terms, the orange RSS logo appears and clicking on it allow you to set up a feed based on those search terms. If you want a feed based on all our latest resources, then just leave the search field blank. Why not go to the Resource Finder and try it out?

CORE-Materials repository has been launched

2010-04-20T12:07:00.009+01:00

The CORE-Materials repository has been launched offering browsing, accurate searching and guided navigation through nearly 1200 teaching and learning resources. The faceted search interface filters the titles, descriptions, classification and keywords for all resources. Extra filtering by license or resource type provides optimal results and improved searchability. The CORE-Materials repository provides a unique platform for downloading interactive Flash animations and for the sharing of videos.

Mechanical testing from Bradford College

2010-04-19T16:36:00.002+01:00

A set of images and interactive Flash animations on mechanical testing procedures and techniques has been released by Bradford College. Brinell, Vickers and Rockwell hardness are all included along with some more portable hardness test machines.

The images and animations are now available for viewing and downloading under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No-Derivative Works license.

Textile micrographs from The University of Birmingham

2010-03-19T15:29:00.004Z

Textile micrographs from School of Metallurgy and Materials, University of Birmingham have been released under Creative Commons Attribution licence.

Click here to see the micrograps in Flickr

Over 300 interactive Flash Movies released from the DoITPoMs.

2010-03-16T12:53:00.004Z

We have released a collection of interactive Flash Movies from the DoITPoMs Teaching and Learning Packages (TLPs)at the University of Cambridge. The DoITPoMS TLPs each focus on a common materials science topic met with in undergraduate teaching and learning. Many of theTLPs include video clips from experiments, along with standard features such as an introduction, summary, questions and answers, references for further study, and links to the MATTER Glossary of Materials Science.

The animations are now available for downloading and running from your local system under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Share-Alike license.

Click here to view the Teaching and Learning Packages (TLPs) from the DoITPoMs.

Sports Materials collection has been released

2010-03-01T15:28:00.002Z

A series which comprises lecture, images and videos on a variety of sports materials and their properties has been released by School of Metallurgy and Materials, University of Birmingham under Creative Commons Attribution licence.

Click below to access the resources at file-share sites

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Electron Microscopy and Analysis book now released

2010-02-19T12:03:00.005Z

We have now released all seven chapters of the Electron Microscopy and Analysis textbook by Peter J. Goodhew, John Humphreys and Richard Beanland under a BY-SA Creative Commons license.

This is a third edition of the book, which was published by Taylor and Francis Books UK in 2001. It deals with several sophisticated techniques for magnifying images of very small objects by large amounts - especially in a physical science context. The resource incorporates questions and answers in each chapter for ease of learning. Equally as relevant for material scientists and bioscientists, it is an essential textbook and laboratory manual.

The book can be viewed on Scribd and SlideShare.

CORE-Materials Steering Group Meeting

2010-01-27T14:38:00.008Z

On Tuesday 19th January the CORE-Materials team held their final steering group meeting at the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) in London.
The event was well attended by project partners and members of the IOM3.

As well as updating the project partners on the significant progress made by the CORE-Materials team, ideas were discussed as to how the repository could be sustained beyond the pilot stage.

If you are interested in the day's discussions you can download the full set of meeting notes. Click here to download.

The DoITPoMS Video Library released under CC licence

2009-12-23T13:12:00.005Z

A series of 115 videos has been released by the DoITPoMS at the University of Cambridge and uploaded to YouTube. The DoITPoMS Video Library is a collection of materials science related videos intended for use in teaching and learning.

Click here to view the videos at YouTube

Resource Finder Alpha Testing

2009-12-10T11:00:00.013Z

We have been alpha-testing the new Resource Finder with our consortium partners. This utility will allow users to search for our open educational resources by type (text, video, image, etc.) and by license. We are also designing in a hierarchical subject tree which will allow users to filter their search results by one or more topics.

The feedback from the partners who took part in the test has been largely very positive. They have come back with a number of useful suggestions to further improve the resource finder before it goes live. Thanks to all involved.

Flash Movies from aluMATTER

2009-12-07T17:58:00.004Z

We are currently working on re-packaging a selection of interactive Flash Movies from the award-winning aluMATTER website to make them available for downloading and running from your local system. This is in response to a large number of requests over the years from users wishing to have access to the movies whilst offline. These resources will be available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial Non-Derivative license. aluMATTER has been developed by the European Aluminium Association.

Software Licensing

2009-11-27T14:06:00.002Z

So far, all resources in CORE-Materials have been released under Creative Commons licenses. However it has become apparent these licenses are insufficient when dealing with source code for software.

The Creative Commons website FAQ advises against their licenses for software and instead points to the Free Software Foundation and the Open Source Initiative for appropriate licenses. Licenses at these websites apply limitations as to how source code is used, redistributed and improved, it cannot be relicensed under a more restrictive license.

HD Videos on Materials for Dental Technology

2009-11-26T10:52:00.001Z

A series of ten high-definition videos has been released by the School of Clinical Dentistry at the University of Sheffield and uploaded to YouTube. The videos comprise:

Constructing a plaster model of the dentition [3 parts]
Restoring a tooth (gold crown) [3 parts]
Restoring a tooth (CAD-CAM ceramic) [4 parts]

Click here to view the videos at YouTube

Durability of Materials from CES EduPack 2009 Released

2009-11-23T18:09:00.001Z

We have just released the entire Cambridge Engineering Selector EduPack 2009 Durability package. It is available for download as a single document from Scribd or SlideShare.

The performances of materials in the following types of environment are covered:

Water & aqueous environments
Acids & alkalis
Fuels, oils & solvents
Halogens & gases
Built environments
Flammability
Thermal environments

Video uploads to YouTube

2009-11-16T15:22:00.000Z

We're planning to spend some time next week developing an API to allow us to batch upload video clips into YouTube.

JISC-CETIS 2009 Conference

2009-11-12T16:36:00.000Z

A number of our project members attended the JISC-CETIS 2009 Conference in Birmingham. We came back with plenty of good ideas to enhance the CORE-Materials project.

There was some useful stuff from Charles Duncan at Intrallect on the automatic generation of metadata from texts, which we think can help us reduce the time it takes to manually catalogue our resources. During the session, we also met John McNaught from the National Centre for Text Mining (NaCTeM), who also offered sage advice on the same subject.

Chris Clarke from Talis gave a very good overview on the use of machine-readable data to build linked open courseware.

We also learned from Russell Stannard from the University of Westminster about the successful use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to 'broadcast' the release of new OER content to followers.

Cambridge Engineering Selector

2009-11-01T21:00:00.000Z

We're working with Granta Design to release the materials data and science notes from the Durability section of CES EduPack 2009. The performances of materials in the following types of environment are covered:

Water & aqueous environments
Acids & alkakis
Fuels, oils & solvents
Halogens & gases
Built environments
Flammability
Thermal environments

As well as adding the content to our website, we also aim to make the material available for download as ZIP and PDF.

Over 750 micrographs added from DoITPoMS micrograph library

2009-10-20T00:02:00.003+01:00

We've released a load of micrographs from DoITPoMs at the University of Cambridge.
They look great at Flickr and you can easily create a customised slideshow on your own site. Take a look at the one we've created on our own site.

TALAT lectures on aluminium technology now released

2009-10-20T00:00:00.002+01:00

We have now released 149 TALAT lectures by the European Aluminium Association under a BY-NC-SA Creative Commons license.

They can be viewed on Scribd and SlideShare.

Hierarchical subject tree for Materials Science & Engineering

2009-08-18T20:17:00.000+01:00

One of the key outputs from the CORE-Materials project is to develop a hierarchical subject tree to help users browse and filter their search results.

As an interdisciplinary discipline, developing a genuine 'taxonomy' for Materials is perhaps unrealistic, but we can develop a useful set of hierarchical 'facets' through which users from all types of background might wish to access our resources. Therefore we will enable users to search by materials types, processes, applications, scientific concepts, plus a range of other 'top-level' categories, as follows:

Science approaches
Materials
Processes
Applications
Product Forms
Properties
Testing, analysis & experimentation
Scale
Others (Sustainability, Management, Design, Health & Safety...)

At the project outset, we asked our partners to contribute to the process of building our subject tree and would like to thank them for their good ideas. Naturally we have been able to incorporate some and not others, but we have now come up with a good starting point - one which we can use to classify the resources we currently have.

The subject tree is unlikely ever to be 'final' and will be able to alter it as the project progresses.

Click here to check out the current tree.

Materials images at Flickr

2009-08-14T23:01:00.000+01:00

The project team has adapted a Flickr upload API to allow us to batch upload images and metadata to the Flickr website.

You can now view the CORE-Materials images at Flickr.