Metallurgical engineering

Japanese: 金属工学 - きんぞくこうがく（英語表記）metallurgical engineering

A field of study that encompasses technical fields such as smelting and processing of metals, manufacturing of alloys and their processing methods, and theoretical fields that investigate the mechanical, physical and chemical nature of metal alloys. Although the two fields are closely related, for the convenience of specialized learning, they are divided into subjects such as metallurgy, metal processing, metallurgical materials, metallography, metal chemistry and metal physics. In addition, special techniques and theories are extracted and given names such as casting engineering, powder metallurgy, welding engineering, metal physics, metal electronics, and semiconductor engineering. In terms of industrial scale and technical system, they are sometimes divided into ferrous metallurgy and non-ferrous metallurgy. Only seven metals were known to humans from prehistoric times: gold, silver, copper and bronze, iron, lead, tin and mercury, and most metals were discovered and developed after the 18th and 19th centuries. Therefore, metals were only studied for a mere 100 years, and in the early days, metallurgy focused mainly on smelting, and when combined with mining, it was called mining metallurgy, but with the subsequent remarkable developments in physics, chemistry, and engineering in general, metal-related techniques and theories became extremely diverse and extensive, leading to the establishment of the field of metallurgy as we know it today.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica Concise Encyclopedia About Encyclopaedia Britannica Concise Encyclopedia Information

Japanese:

金属の製錬と加工，合金の製造とその処理法などの技術分野と，金属合金の力学的・物理的・化学的な本質を追究する理論分野とを統括する学問領域。両分野は密接に関連しているが，専門的学習の便宜上，金属製錬学，金属加工学，金属材料学，金属組織学，金属化学，金属物理学などの科目に分けられ，また特殊な技術・理論を抽出して鋳造工学，粉末冶金学，溶接工学，金属物性論，金属電子論，半導体工学などの名称も使われる。工業の規模と技術系統の面から，鉄冶金学と非鉄冶金学に分けることもある。有史前から人類に知られていた金属は金，銀，銅および青銅，鉄，鉛，スズ，水銀の7種だけで，多くの金属は 18～19世紀以後の発見開発である。したがって，金属が学問の対象となったのはわずか百年にすぎず，しかもその初期は製錬を主とした冶金で，採鉱とあわせて採鉱冶金といわれたが，その後の物理・化学および工学全般の著しい進展に伴い，金属関係の技術と理論も非常に多岐広範なものとなって今日の金属工学の分野が成立した。「冶金学」の名称は，当用漢字制定以来次第に「金属工学」に変った。

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