Look around your room. Nearly everything you see is made from a material. A window is glass, a spoon is metal, your jumper is fabric. Choosing the right material is like choosing the right tool.
Why this matters: Pick the wrong material and things break or fail — a paper umbrella would soak through in the rain! Knowing what each material is good at helps us build safe, useful things.
Common materials
Here are six materials you meet every day, and what each is like.
| Material | What it is like | A good job for it |
|---|---|---|
| Wood | Strong, can be shaped, floats | A table or a chair |
| Metal | Hard, strong, shiny | A spoon or a car |
| Plastic | Light, bendy, waterproof | A drinks bottle |
| Glass | Hard, see-through, can break | A window |
| Fabric | Soft, bendy, warm | A coat or a blanket |
| Rock | Very hard and heavy | A wall or a step |
Words that describe materials
We use special words for how a material behaves. These are called properties.
- Hard – you cannot dent it easily, like a rock.
- Soft – it squashes or feels gentle, like a cushion.
- Bendy – it can bend without snapping, like a rubber band.
- Waterproof – water cannot pass through, like a raincoat.
- Transparent – you can see straight through it, like clean glass.
Matching a material to a job
Worked example: Why is a window made of glass and not wood? A window's job is to let light in. Glass is transparent, so light passes through; wood is not, so you could not see out. Glass wins!
Natural or man-made?
Some materials come straight from nature — these are natural materials. Wood comes from trees, rock from the ground, and wool (a fabric) from sheep. Other materials are made by people in factories — these are man-made. Plastic is man-made, and so is glass, made by heating sand until it melts.
Remember: Natural means it comes from nature. Man-made means people made it. Some things, like a wooden chair, start as a natural material but are shaped by people.