Originally Posted by SalsaPodio

I see what you're saying and I probably explained myself incorrectly.

I really want to understand thermo. For instance, my research deals with the Mo-Ni-Al-Ir-Hf system. I'm developing a new high temperature materials system based off of Mo, which has inherently poor oxidation, so I'm coating a (Mo)-NiAl alloy with a Ir-Hf modified NiAl for oxidation resistance. I am doing so through a combination of electroplating, pack cementation, and some other interesting things. From what I've said you can see that there are a lot of interfaces with different chemistries and a lot of high temperature processing, giving enough solid state diffusion for some interesting things to happen. I would love to have a more thorough understanding of thermo to get a better grasp of what kind of phases I should be expecting given my experimental parameters (coating thickness, pack time/composition, annealing temperature), but there is also a lot of kinetics involved.

The thermo class I'm in right now involves the professor putting up a slide of equations and letting us look at them for a few minutes. Then he proceeds to the next slide. It's absolutely awful. I just don't want to sound like I want the equations handed to me, because that's not it at all. Well now it's back to studying for the test.