Overview
Overview
Learn to bend metal to your will.
Description
Who wouldn't want to study metal? You'd learn all about dragons, skull thrones, guitar solos, flaming chariots, singing in a high-pitched...what? Oh, sorry, it's not that kind of metal.
We're not going to lie. We're a little disappointed.
Just a little, though. Metal is actually pretty cool on its own. After all, you can make most of those things out of metal, and yes, that includes guitar strings. You're talking about a collection of substances that's been the pinnacle of building material for well over two thousand years—not to mention serving as currency for all that time.
Gold is metal, as is iron, which was important enough to have a whole age named after it (source). There's liquid mercury and superconductive copper, as well as different kinds of alloys, or metal mixtures. Really, there are so many metal materials, it's kind of dizzying.
Metal's ubiquity is the whole point. Think about your day up until now. Chances are you had breakfast. Your utensils were metal. Drove anywhere? Without metal, the car would be some upholstery and plastic vents. We know you're looking at a computer, and those things are like 90% metal. We just made that figure up, but we know that percentage is high.
Metal is the gold standard of building materials. It's so important that we can't even use a metaphor—gold standard—without mentioning a metal by name. That's how good this stuff is.
It's not going anywhere, either. Even with modern materials, metal plays a big part. Some are modifications of metals we've had forever, and some are brand new, cobbled together with mad science. Humanity is highly unlikely to give this metal addiction up and suddenly go, "You know what? If clay was good enough for my ancestors, it's good enough for me."
Clay robots? That's ridiculous.
Like Magneto, after your college training, metal will call you master. Not literally. If metal starts talking to you, seek medical help immediately. If it's only figuratively doing that, you're all set. You will bend it, shape it, and turn it into things people can use.
Metallurgists—which is the totally steampunk name for people with this major—get to work with metal in new ways. They get to find different uses for old materials. Most importantly, perhaps, they're taking what has always been the yardstick of civilization and using it to advance us beyond outdated terms like "yardstick."
Famous People who majored in Metallurgical Engineering
- Donald L. Ritter, Republican member of the U.S. House of Reps
- Paul T. Stecko, former chairman of Packaging Corporation of America
- Paulo Bilkstein, assistant professor at Stanford and TED talker
- Magneto, leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants
Percentage of US students who major in Metallurgical Engineering:
0.02%
Stats obtained from this source.