MEETING GOD - THE AWESOME CREATOROF HEAVEN AND EARTH
IN MATERIALS SCIENCE
Juliana Anggono
Mechanical Engineering Department – Faculty of Industrial Technology
Petra Christian University
Jalan Siwalankerto 121-131
Surabaya 60236
Telp: 031-298 3466; Fax: 031-8491215
Email:
ABSTRACT
As a Christian material scientist, I come to acknowledge that God, my Saviour, is the wonderful and perfect Creator of heaven and earth. As my knowledge of God and His creation grow, I find myself in awe of creative and detailed results of His hands increating materialsas resources of the earth providedfor human usage. (Genesis 1:28) The term materials used in this paper is to mean those chiefly inorganic materials that are extracted from the Earth’s crust and are restricted to metals and ceramics only which are the major interests of the author.All the materials needed for health and prosperity of human societies have come from the Earth, His creation directly and indirectly. God wants us to use what He has put in the world:"For the Lord your God is bringing you into a good land - …… a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills. (Deuteronomy 8: 9, NIV)This paper aims and focuses on exploring and showing God’s perfect works in creating materials (Genesis 1:31-2:1) by revealing some fundamental concepts learned in materials science as a result of the creativity and curiosity of man as an image bearer of his Creator.(Genesis 1:27; 2:15) The discussion in this paper is based on the belief and understanding of God’s Word mainly in the book of Genesis chapter 1 and 2: the world was made by God, man had to work; and He that gave us this earth for our habitation, has made us something to work upon to share our time and thoughts. Moving from the Stone Age to the Age of Silicon, from the days of prehistoric survival to the cutting edge of nanotechnology, this paper connects the worlds of minerals and molecules to the sweep of human history, and shows not only that materials will dominate the century ahead but also how creative and innovative God, the Creator has inspired the inventors of modern materialsin changing our world.
Keywords: materials science, Stone Age, Silicon Age, book of Genesis, Earth’s crust, God the Creator.
1. Introduction
The Oxford English Dictionary definition of a material is the matter from which a thing is or can be made.[1]All matter is potentially 'a material'. Matter becomes interesting to materials scientists when the characterisation of its structure and properties, or working out how to make it (creating materials and transforming existing materials), leads to an appreciation of its suitability in an existing role, or the discovery of new applications for the material.
Materials – the first science! It is one of the oldest forms of engineering and applied science, deriving from the manufacture of ceramics when our ancestors began to fire clay to make pottery. The pottery represented the first synthesis of materials from minerals,[2] provided a better means for storage and transport of food and water, thus helping in the struggle for survival. Thatfact from the world of our ancestor shows us what the Bible says about a true and sovereign God who instructs us to take responsibility concerning the care of His creation:God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."(Genesis 1:28, NIV) This verse contains the word subdue, an expression that is helpful in determining the mandate of stewardship. Thus we are not to exploit, waste or despoil God’s creatures, but to care for them and use them in the service of God and man. Tragically, because of sin, man abused his stewardship. We are now in a struggle that was not originally intended. But the redeemed person, the person in Christ, is refashioned. He can now approach culture with a clearer understanding of God's mandate. He can now begin again to exercise proper stewardship. This is the foundation for any Christians as redeemed persons in Christ to play a big part in shaping our world, particularly in the synthesis of high performance materials which will be discussed later.
God wants us to use what He has put in the world. This can be seen from the development of technology from the Stone-Age to the Silicon-Age that the development of mankind has been described in terms of the materials used in fabricating tools and devices (Figure 1-4). Whether it is a flint axe, a leather-skin drum, a telescope, a microelectronic circuit or an artificial heart someone has considered what the properties should be of the material, then they found a suitable material and engineered it to perform the required function.
Figure 1 Early Materials Science: Stone-Age human-kind processes a tool. / Figure 2One of the oldest finds: a beautiful Mesolithic flint blade approximately 6,000 years old.[3]Figure 3 Integrated printed electronics. [4] / Figure 4CardioWest Total Artificial Heart.[5]
There are many ways to make useful things out of materials, someof which are quite specific to a particular class of materials. They include rolling, extrusion,machining, grinding, forging, forming, injection moulding, casting, sintering, deposition fromliquids or vapours and many others. Again, there are crucial links between the structure andproperties of a material and the methods one can use to make useful objects out of it, and viceversa. The aim of understanding the links between the internal structure of the material, the final properties of the material, and the processing ofa material is to understand how and why the material fulfils its intended purpose, or how itsperformance may be enhanced. Learning a material is like learning people. The performance or function of the material is the driver forworking on its structure, properties and processing, and measuring its performance.
2. What is Materials Science?
Perhaps the simplest way to answer this question is to look at what materials scientists do.[6] First, they determine the structure of materials. Second, they measure properties of materials. Third, they devise ways of processing materials, i.e. creating materials, transforming existing materials, and making useful things out of them. Fourth, they think about how a material is suited to the purpose it serves already, and how it may be enhanced to give better performance for particular applications.Each of these four activities is intellectually challenging and there are manymaterials scientists who are fully stretched not being engaged in more than one or two ofthem. But what makes materials science especially interesting and rewarding is the fact thatthese four activities are very dependent on each other. Indeed, this is what elevates the statusof materials science to a discipline in its own right, apart from but drawing on chemistry,physics, engineering, biology, earth sciences and mathematics.
3. Materials We Use
Our ancestors learned long ago that the materials needed for food, clothing, dwellings, fuel, and for commercial activities are not uniformly distributed over Earth. Figure 5 and 6 show the locations of some of the major iron deposits in the world and the major world reserves of aluminium, titanium, and manganese. This leads to the development of local, regional, national, and international trade routes.
Figure 5 The locations of some of the major iron deposits in the world. The banded iron formation (BIFs) constitute the world’s major producers today and are the major reserves that will provide iron in the twenty-first century.[2]Figure 6 The major world reserve of aluminium, titanium, and manganese. Also shown are the largest producers of silicon and magnesium. [2]
The Earth’s natural resources are the raw materials from which directly or indirectly, all products used in our society are made. Metals and ceramics used by men come from the minerals God placed at the Earth’s crust.Mineral resources are nonrenewable resources of which the Earth contains a fixed quantity and which are not replenished by natural processes operating in short time scales. Metals which consist of chemical elements that either singly or in combination have those special properties such as malleability, ductility, fusibility, high thermal conductivity, and electrical conductivity that allow them to be used in a wide range of technical applications.
Metals have been the key materials through which humans have developed the remarkbly diversified society we now enjoy and by which we have managed to proceed from the primitive societies of antiquity to the present. It is not surprising that metal-winning and metal-working skills of ancient communities have been used as a measure of societal development and hence that terms such as Bronze Age and Iron Age have come into common parlance.The first metals were utilised by humans before 15,000 BC – they were gold (Au) and copper (Cu) because these are the two metals that most commonly occur in the metallic, or native, state. They found the metal behaves differently from brittle rocks and our ancestor’s ability to shape the metals into useful and desirable forms developed rapidly. By 4000 B.C. our ancestors had learned about extractive metallurgy to gain copper from certain kinds of rocks (sulfide ores) using primitive smelting techniques in which charcoal probably supplied the heat and also the means of chemically reducing copper ores to free the copper metal. Within a thousand or so years, silver (Ag), tin (Sn), lead (Pb), zinc (Zn), and other metals were also being extracted and ultimately combined to form alloys such as brass (Cu and Zn), bronze (Cu and Sn), and pewter (Sn and other metals such Pb, Cu, and Sb).
Iron, though much more abundant in Earth’s crust than most other metals, is more difficult to extract and hence its use came somewhat later.[2]It is believed that the first iron utilised came from meteorites. The strength and hardness of iron make it superior to copper and broanze for weapons, and this led to the widespread use of iron.
Ceramic materials are complex chemical compounds and solutions containing both metallic and nonmetallic elements. Alumina (Al2O3) for example, is a ceramic composed of metallic (Al) and nonmetallic (O) atoms. Ceramic materials have a wide range of mechanical and physical properties. Applications vary from pottery, brick, tile, cooking ware, and soil pipe to glass, refractories, magnets, electrical devices, fibers, and abrasives. The tiles that protect the space shuttle are silica, a ceramic material. The cement and concrete are ceramic materials used for highways and other construction purposes which are manufactured in greater volume than any other product.
Ceramics are usually hard, brittle, high-melting-point materials with low electrical and thermal conductivity, good chemical and thermal stability, and high compressive strength. However, ceramics are somewhat an enigma. Although, they are, indeed, brittle, some ceramic matrix composites (such as Si3N4-SiC) obtain fracture toughness values greater than some metals (such as age-hardened Al alloys) and some are even superplastic. [7] Although most ceramics are good electrical and thermal insulators, SiC and AlN have thermal conductivities near that of metals! All the explanations above show that the Perfect God with His Marvellous Thoughts has created and provided the materials for us to do experiments to come up with ideas in creating high performance materials for transforming the way we do things.
4. Detailed and Wonderful Works of God in Creating Materials
Learning and understanding of materials science involves relating the desired properties(mechanical, electrical, magnetic,optical or thermal)and relative performance of a material in a certain application to the structure of the atoms and phases in that material through characterization. Understanding the structure of materials at the atomic level, it has brought my thought to acknowledge the Perfect and Wonderful God who created it. Learning materials science this far, has also brought me to a conclusion that materials are like people. As God has created each person biologically unique through his/her fingerprints, iris, immune system, DNA, and voice;[8] similarity is found in material with its uniqeness which will not be repeated in any other material. This leads to the ease of material’s identification, i.e. finding its composition (chemical contents).
The structure of a material may be examined at four levels: atomic structure, atomic arrangement, microstructure, and macrostructure (Figure 7). Structural features atall these length-scale frequently have a profound effect on the properties and performance ofthe material. However, we will focus on the atomic structure to see the uniqeness of each material.
If we look at the chemical elements in the Periodic Table, we know that each element has its own atomic number which is shown the number of electrons and protons in each atom. The electrons occupy discrete energy levels within the atom. Each electron posseses a particular energy, with no more than two electrons in each atom having the same energy. This wonderful idea of God the Creator led the invention of Energy Dispersive X-ray Analysis (EDAX) for identification of chemical composition of a phase in the structure.
Atomic arrangement plays an important role in determining the microstructure and behaviour of a solid. Due to differing atomic arrangement, for example, in aluminium provides good ductility, while that in iron provides good strength. Ceramic transducers capable of detecting tumors in human body rely on an atomic arrangement that produces a permanent displacement of electrical charge within the material. Metals and many ceramics have a crystalline structure in which the atoms display a special atomic arrangement extends throughout the entire material. The atoms form a regular repetitive, gridlike pattern, or lattice. The lattice differs from material to material in both shape and size depending on the size of atoms and the type of bonding between the atoms. This explains another uniqeness of each material that God created. Therefore when God saw his work, all was very good. (Genesis 1:31)
Figure 6 Four levels of structure in a material: (a) atomic structure, (b) crystal structure, (c) grain structure in iron (x100), and (d) multiple-phase structure in white cast iron (x200) [7]Figure 7 shows the subdivision of the crystalline lattice (called unit cell) of titanium and iron. Titanium has a hexagonal close-packed structure ( phase) at ambient temperature and pressure. At about 890oC, the titanium undergoes an allotropic transformation to a body-centred cubic (β phase) which remains stable to the melting temperature. Iron also has more than one crystal structure. At low temperatures, iron has the body-centered cubic (BCC) structure, but at higher temperatures, iron transforms to a face-centered cubic structure (FCC). This behaviour created by God has led a possibility for men to apply heat treatment of steel and titanium. Many ceramic materials, such as silica (SiO2) also are polymorphic.
Figure 7 Hexagonal close-packed structure of Ti, compared with face-centred cubic, body-centred cubic and body-centred tetragonal structures of iron. [9] / Figure 8 Reinforcing interactions between X-rays and the crystal structure of material. [10]The regular order of atomic arrangement in metallic and ceramic materials has led the invention of X-ray diffractometer (XRD) to identify the crystal structure of a material (Figure 8).
5. The Miracle of Advanced Materials
God is creator.Thus, some element of that creativity is instilled in man. God created the cosmos. He declared that what He had done was "very good." He then put man within creation. Man responded creatively. As the bearer of his Creator-God's image, he could not be satisfied apart from cultural activity. It is no wonder that those who see God's redemption as a transformation of human culture speak of it in terms of re-creation. [11]
The first two chapters of Genesis provide a foundation for God's view of culture and man's responsibility in it. God's instructions concerning the care of His creation has led the creation high performance materials spanning biologicalprocesses such as the growth of bone, organic chemistry for the synthesis of polymers,processes inside the Earth for certain minerals, chemical metallurgy for the extraction ofmetals from ores, sol-gel techniques, vapour deposition techniques for many electronicmaterials and devices, aerosol production of oxide powders, and many more.
6. Summary
Tens of thousands of materials are now available for various engineering purposes, and new ones are constantly being created. We have long identified epochs of human history in terms of the materials exploited – referring for example, to the given era of Stone-Age or the Iron-Age. The hallmark of progress in every era has been the way ‘materials engineers’ worked to improve the usefulness of materials, whether extracting coal or iron ore from the earth or creating new materials from combinations, such as iron and carbon to produce steel. For most of history such improvements have been incremental and have depended on experimentation, accidents, and passing on from generation to generation the ‘art of materials processing and finishing. Currently the insights into materials are at the atomic and molecular level – the science of nanotechnology – the understanding of materials at the nanometer and molecular size – is now building on these prior excursions into the submicroscopic world. [12]