Material

Various different materials classified by microstructure. Clockwise from top-left: steel kitchen container (metals), terracotta flowerpots (ceramics), plastics (polymers), and wooden pallets (composites).

Material is what everything that you can touch is made of. Even material that is too small to touch, is called material. We use materials to make things. We can also call material "physical substances."

Raw material is materials such as ores which we can clean and mix with other materials to make another material like steel, for example. Cotton is a raw material used to make textiles, which are used to make clothes. Material is not matter, though. Matter is everything in existence. Material is used for things that have use. Refined materials are materials that have been refined, like metal, reduced or converted into better, more useful materials like clothes and tools. Refined materials are usually mixes of other materials, like glue or steel.