“Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need.”

—Charles F. Kettering

In the previous chapters, we did refer to materials properties without discussing them in details. It is difficult to cover all the aspects of materials properties in a single chapter. Hence, the readers are encouraged to refer to texts enlisted in Bibli­ography. Here, three broad categories of properties — mechanical, physical, and chemical are identified. From the viewpoint of nuclear reactor applications, all these properties are important. Hence, in this chapter, we will learn some basics of these properties, the test techniques used for their evaluation, and relevant test data analysis techniques.

5.1