In this blog, I am collecting nice sentences & aphorisms inspired by Mechanics & Materials. Some of them come from my daily reading, and some are from my advisors, teachers, & colleagues.

The properties of engineering materials are defined by how they react to extreme forces: ultimate tensile strength, hardness, melting point, etc. I believe people’s characters are also defined by how they react when they are pushed to the limit.

By Matt Brown, "Racecar: Searching for the Limit in Formula SAE"

Our learning process is like an elastic-plastic deformation. To get some permanent knowledge, you'd better be loaded to a plastic range. Staying in the comfort zone (elastic range) will end up with nothing.

By my Solid Mechanics teacher @ Tsinghua

Juner, you know nothing about a subject until you teach it.

By my postdoc supervisor, Martin Z. Bazant

It may be that you are not yourself luminous, but that you are a conductor of light. Some people without possessing genius have a remarkable power of stimulating it.

Sherlock Holmes