Material is anything made of matter, constituted of one or more substances. Wood, cement, hydrogen, air and water are all examples of materials. Sometimes the term "material" is used more narrowly to refer to substances or components with certain physical properties that are used as inputs to production or manufacturing. In this sense, materials are the parts required to make something else, from buildings and art to stars and computers.
Read more about Material: Raw Materials and Processing, Some Examples of Raw Materials
Famous quotes containing the word material:
“We have not the slightest idea that women are made of such light material that the breath of any fool or knave may blow them on the rocks of ruin.”
—Jane Grey Swisshelm (1815–1884)
“Would it not be worth while to discover nature in Milton? be native to the universe? I, too, love Concord best, but I am glad when I discover, in oceans and wildernesses far away, the material of a million Concords: indeed, I am lost, unless I discover them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market.”
—Eric J. Hobsbawm (b. 1917)