Mechanical Behavior of Plastics
Polymeric materials under load are the subject here, covering both the molecular mechanisms behind their behavior and the continuum mechanics used to describe them mathematically. MIT's OpenCourseWare materials walk through Hookean and entropic elastic deformation, linear viscoelasticity, composite materials and laminates, and yield and fracture, tracing how processing and structure shape the mechanical properties of both synthetic and natural polymers. The approach is fundamentally an engineering one, but with an atomistic flavor, connecting molecular-scale structure to macroscopic response. Course materials include lecture notes, problem sets, and exams typical of MIT OCW offerings, free to access with no certificate attached. Aimed at students with an engineering or materials science background, the course suits anyone who wants a rigorous grounding in how plastics stretch, bend, creep, and break under real-world loading conditions.