Materials 2H04: Measurement and Communication, is sort of a mix of everything you'll do. This will probably make sense after the
mark breakdown. It spans two terms, and officially, it consists of weekly 1-hour tutorials in addition to 3-hour labs/lectures twice a week. While it takes up a hefty seven hours a week on your timetable, in reality it's much less than this.
Tutorials only run during first term. They're led by the professor Gu Xu, who also teaches Materials 2B03 and essentially just for review of various topics covered in Materials 1M03 last year. I won't go as far as to say they're optional, but if you're comfortable with your knowledge of 1M03, then don't fret too much if you miss one. I don't remember if attendance is taken at these, so you should at least go to the first to make sure.
First term: lectures and labs are a little more confusing. The first four weeks or so, the three-hour blocks will actually be held in a classroom and are lecture-like in nature, but they're not exactly formal lectures. Run by grad student TAs, you'll learn about everything from significant digits to how to write a formal report, and how to use Microsoft Excel. I don't know if it'll stick around, but this year on our first day we were assigned some time to simply write a page about our families. It was marked so I assume it constituted an easy 3%.
Dave from the co-op office came by once and taught us how to to write a good cover letter and resume too, which could come in handy if you're not enrolled in the co-op program. Attendance
is taken in these, so skip with caution. Almost all of the lectures finish before the three-hour point though, and at least half finish within an hour and a half, so be prepared to finish early.
At this point, you'll also be split up into groups of six or so that you'll be working with the rest of the year. You have pretty much all term to prepare an oral presentation on an assigned topic to present at the end of term 1, but you'll also be working on labs with the same group, which start when the lectures end.
Since equipment and space is limited, only half the groups in the class will work on the labs on any given day. In my year, there were 12 groups and labs were Monday and Wednesday, so groups 1-6 would perform the lab on Monday (with the Wednesday off) and the 7-12 would perform the lab on Wednesday (with the Monday off). You're given a week off to write up, so any given group will actually only spend three hours every two weeks in class working, contrary to what your timetable may say.
As for the labs themselves, they can range from mundane (measure stuff with three different tools!) to relatively interesting (mount a sample, etch and polish it, then look at it under a microscope). They cover things you'll learn over the course of the year such as heat transfer and stress/strain curves. You'll also work with FEMLAB, a program that allows you to simulate properties of various materials when stuff happens to them (eg. how much does a steel beam of this size deform when x Newtons of force are applied to it)
The reports are pretty standard and weren't too difficult as long as you give yourself enough time to figure out what's going on. You're given two full weeks to write up the lab, so try not to leave it to the last minute since sometimes it's hard to remember what actually happened in a lab you did two weeks ago.
Near the end of first term, you'll present the oral presentation and you're given the last week or so off from the class.
Second term labs aren't much different than the first term ones. The TAs often have everything prepared for you too, and they'll send you whatever data you need for your report. Since they want to leave too, I found that they often cut corners when running through the labs and while this might seem bad at first, you do save a bit of time and again, everything you need will be either sent or told to you. They're worth a bit more and they're also weekly instead of biweekly. Because they start in late-January and there are only five of them though, you'll be done the course as soon as you submit that last lab which could be as early as the beginning of March.
Mark Breakdown
Along with the mark breakdown above, the course outline is stored on a public website which can be accessed by clicking anywhere in this paragraph It contains the labs, tutorial slides, and this past year's schedule if you're interested in seeing how it works.
Considering this course is four units and the material relatively easy, I'd say that this is as close to a bird course in Materials as you'll get. There are no tests or exams to worry about, so just put a little effort into the labs, don't skip, and a double digit mark shouldn't be a problem.
