1. Introduction

When designing a new product and coming up with its prototype, designers need to choose the most suitable materials to match a particular purpose or function of the device being designed. Therefore, you need to be able to list some materials properties in English and describe what you can do with those materials. This unit introduces some useful nouns and verbs to do so, together with some phrases used to explain technical phenomena to lay persons. Although during your professional career, the persons you will discuss technical issues with will probably be your colleagues, i.e. experts in the field of electrical engineering, the ability to communicate tech-related topics to general public can be useful, especially when launching new products on the market. Your prospective customers will definitely appreciate basic data on the novel product given to them in an understandable way. And your company heads will probably appreciate a greater number of customers willing to buy that product.

Contents:

Unit 7c introduces some phrases to…

  • introduce an explanation intended for a lay person: in other words, or, like, just as, such as, that is to say/that is (i.e.), to put this in everyday terms/language, another way of putting this is that, to put that in layman´s terms

  • describe some materials properties: resilience, regenerative capability, conductive, fluidity, elasticity, flexible, liquid, transparent

  • describe what you can do with a material: stress, bend, squeeze, torsion, twist, impact, strike, hit, press, pull, oscillate, melt, stretch, conduct, deforming force, deformed