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deezee wrote: Yeah but materials science is such a HUGE and broad field of science... i heard it focused on chemistry

Materials Science is inherently multidisciplinary, mostly including aspects of chemistry, physics and engineering. The way SO as a whole is structured places events on individual committees. For a variety of reasons, Materials Science is on the Chemistry committee. This means that the event will have a strong focus on the chemistry elements of Materials Science, but not an exclusive focus (I would still expect various questions/activities on structure and materials performance.)

So i guess it's basically applying chem and physics stuff to do certain things... So knowing properties of matter and measuring them would probably be a good thing to study.

deezee wrote:So i guess it's basically applying chem and physics stuff to do certain things... So knowing properties of matter and measuring them would probably be a good thing to study.

thats essentially materials science... I would recommend putting emphasis properties of physics applied in a chemistry lab environment...

The actual rules are surprisingly similar to the 2013 draft rules. Also as mentioned above, definitely a lot of chem involved.
I was hoping for more nano science like the older versions of the trial, but this seems like it's gonna be a great event

How do you think the lab portion of the event will run?

So what do we need to know for this challenge that's different from last year?

Does anyone know where to find good practice tests for Materials Science? The test exchange doesn't have any unfortunately...

So, I know that we're all in the dark with this event, so in all of our own vested interest in SO, and the spirit of fair competition. If ANYONE figures out what this event is about please post it here.

Also, what's up with Miller indices and Bravais Lattices? Can anyone find a good tutorial for them?

Wikipedia would be a good start to learn about both Bravais lattices and Miller indices. I would start with understand what Bravais lattices are first before learning about Miller indices. Once you know about Bravais lattices, Miller indices is pretty easy to understand.

Has anyone here competed in this event yet (as a trial from last year or from any invitationals so far this year)? I'm trying to get a feel for how hard the questions for this event usually end up being, because I've been casually prepping for a while now, but everything I seem to touch upon seems like either basic knowledge or deeply advanced material. Struggling to find a happy medium/ trying to understand how difficult the test will actually get...