WHAT THINGS ARE MADE OF: THE MATERIALS BEHIND MODERN LIFE

Credit Hours: 3 · Undergraduate Lower-Level

This course introduces students to the materials that underpin modern life and how those materials are obtained, processed, and transformed into everyday products and systems. Rather than focusing on how technologies operate, the course examines where key materials come from, how they are extracted, separated, refined, and manufactured, and how these processes shape resource use and environmental impacts. Using examples drawn from the material foundations of daily life—including food, shelter, mobility, and energy—the course traces how raw materials become the products and systems that support modern living. Designed as a distribution course for first- and second-year undergraduates, the class assumes no prior engineering background and emphasizes conceptual understanding of material supply chains, industrial processing, and their environmental implications.