Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Productivity-improving technologies date back to antiquity, with rather slow progress until the late Middle Ages. Important examples of early to medieval European technology include the water wheel, the horse collar, the spinning wheel, the three-field system (after 1500 the four-field system—see crop rotation) and the blast furnace.
Smart materials, also called intelligent or responsive materials, [1] [page needed] are designed materials that have one or more properties that can be significantly changed in a controlled fashion by external stimuli, such as stress, moisture, electric or magnetic fields, light, temperature, pH, or chemical compounds.
Emerging technology Status Potential applications Related articles 4D printing: Research and development Aerogel: Hypothetical, experiments, diffusion, early uses [72] Improved thermal insulation (for pipelines, aerospace, etc.), as well as insulative "glass" if it can be made clear Amorphous metal: Experiments, use in amorphous metal transformers
Throughout this, fundamental shifts are taking place in how the global production and supply network operates through ongoing automation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices, using modern smart technology, large-scale machine-to-machine communication (M2M), and the Internet of things (IoT). This integration results in ...
An axe made of iron, dating from the Swedish Iron Age, found at Gotland, Sweden: Iron—as a new material—initiated a dramatic revolution in technology, economy, society, warfare and politics. A technological revolution is a period in which one or more technologies is replaced by another new technology in a short amount of time.
Programmable matter seeks to design materials whose properties can be easily, reversibly and externally controlled though a fusion of information science and materials science. Due to the popularity and media exposure of the term nanotechnology, the words picotechnology and femtotechnology have been coined in analogy to it, although these are ...
The history of materials science is the study of how different materials were used and developed through the history of Earth and how those materials affected the culture of the peoples of the Earth. The term "Silicon Age" is sometimes used to refer to the modern period of history during the late 20th to early 21st centuries.
A major breakthrough in the understanding of materials occurred in the late 19th century, when the American scientist Josiah Willard Gibbs demonstrated that the thermodynamic properties related to atomic structure in various phases are related to the physical properties of a material. [4] Important elements of modern materials science were ...