Re-Envisioning Materials Science Education Through Atomic-Level Computational Modeling

This paper presents a re-designed introductory materials science and engineering (MSE) course that uses computational atomistic modeling for nearly every topic. Computation is becoming ubiquitous in MSE, and it can help dramatically improve understanding of how macro-level behavior emerges from atomic behavior. Just three modeling techniques-molecular dynamics, Monte Carlo, and random walk-can be used to model most topics in an introductory MSE course, and understanding conceptually how these techniques work is not very difficult. After providing background on computation in MSE and in education, we describe the structure of the course as a whole, provide detailed descriptions of two units in the course to illustrate how computational models can be used to teach core MSE concepts, and discuss how this approach differs from the traditional approach.