Choosing and justifying materials and components - Intro

A material can be strong, light and lovely to look at, and still be the wrong one to use. It might cost too much, arrive too late, or sit badly with the people who are meant to buy the product. Exam papers keep asking you to explain a choice like that, and to defend it.

This chapter is about picking a material and saying why. The last chapter gave you the words for what a material is like, and here you use them to make a case. If you are starting from nothing, go in order. Each video adds a group of reasons, and the last one puts them all together.

Choosing materials: function, aesthetics and the environment is where to begin if you have never written a selection answer. It teaches the habit the rest of the chapter leans on: write about the material, not just the product. A common slip is writing about the product when the question asks about the material. Choosing materials: cost and availability is the one to pick if your answers say cheap and stop there. Explaining cost at all is where many students struggle. This video gives you why a big order costs less for each item, and why that can still go wrong. Choosing materials: social, cultural and ethical factors, justifying a choice is where the chapter ends up. If you already know the earlier reasons, go straight here, because it recaps them on one screen before justifying one material from start to finish. The same reports say most students list their points and fewer weigh which ones matter most, so the verdict is the part to watch. Some courses ask for this for the kind of material you study, so keep your own in mind whichever video you press first. You can search for any video by its name or its code, and the codes are right there on the list. The quickest way is the scholafly.com website, which indexes every video in every subject.

Next in the chapter is Choosing materials: function, aesthetics and the environment. Hopefully that's next in your feed, but if not, search for ScholaFly D T oh four, oh one.

Every other video is on scholafly.com too, easy to search by video code or by keyword. Whatever you're revising, go there and have a look, or, watch the next video.