Engineering: The challenge of temperature
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# 5.5 Summary of Section 5

- The phase of a material is characterised by its physical state (e.g. solid, liquid or gas), a distinctive arrangement of the atoms, and its chemical composition.

- Material properties can change suddenly as the temperature increases or decreases, corresponding to changes of phase and the degree of order associated with the arrangement of atoms.

- Shape memory alloys are examples of a wide range of useful engineering materials that exploit critical phenomena arising from phase changes.

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