Materials science

Materials Science is the study of materials that engineers are interested in working with. The actual subject matter has a large degree of overlap with solid chemistry and applied physics, and also the science of geology, plus of course the engineering diciplines themselves. The existence of materials science as a separate discipline is more a mater of history than anything inherent in the subject itself (much like, say, the split between anthropology and sociology): when engineers got interested in things besides metal, the metallurgists became "materials scientists".