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A material property is an intensive property of a material, i.e., a physical property or chemical property that does not depend on the amount of the material. These quantitative properties may be used as a metric by which the benefits of one material versus another can be compared, thereby aiding in materials selection.
Materials science is the study of materials, their properties and their applications. Raw materials can be processed in different ways to influence their properties, by purification, shaping or the introduction of other materials. New materials can be produced from raw materials by synthesis.
Characterization, when used in materials science, refers to the broad and general process by which a material's structure and properties are probed and measured. It is a fundamental process in the field of materials science, without which no scientific understanding of engineering materials could be ascertained.
Properties may also be classified with respect to the directionality of their nature. For example, isotropic properties do not change with the direction of observation, and anisotropic properties do have spatial variance. It may be difficult to determine whether a given property is a material property or not.
Materials science is a highly active area of research. Together with materials science departments, physics, chemistry, and many engineering departments are involved in materials research. Materials research covers a broad range of topics; the following non-exhaustive list highlights a few important research areas.
Elastic properties describe the reversible deformation (elastic response) of a material to an applied stress. They are a subset of the material properties that provide a quantitative description of the characteristics of a material, like its strength. Material properties are most often characterized by a set of numerical parameters called moduli.