Many ceramic and materials engineers, technicians, and managers are responsible for selection of characterization techniques, purchase of instruments or analytical services, performance of routine analyses, interpretation of data, and application of test results to their processes. Many of these same technical people do not want, need, nor care to know the complete derivations and the full equations governing each available characterization technique. In fact, it is unnecessary for anyone to wade through differential equations, complex physics, quantum mechanics, chemistry, or geometric derivations, before they can decide whether or not they need to use a particular characterization technique, or before they can perform an analysis using an instrument.

Most technical people simply want to know which techniques are available, what each technique can do, and how each type of characterization procedure is useful. This book was written for these engineers, technicians, and managers.

In this book, discussions will cover the fundamental purposes of each technique, how each works, what each does, how results generated by each can be used, and how each characterization tool fits into the grand scheme of materials characterization.

This book should be appropriate (1) as a handy reference for all ceramic and materials engineers, technicians, and managers, (2) as a textbook for characterization survey courses at the undergraduate level, and (3) when supplemented with personal research (that is, with detailed homework assignments) into technical articles and advanced textbooks covering each characterization technique, this book should be appropriate as the basis for graduate characterization courses.