> At sufficient detail atomic structure has a huge impact on how a metal sheet bends. Metallurgy seriously investigates at this level.
I know, it’s my job. But as much as we like to obsess about the mechanisms for dislocations climbing and solute interactions, nobody cares when they are designing an aircraft. They have macroscopic laws they put in their finite elements code. These are perfectly adequate to describe most known modes of failures of industrial alloys. Nobody is going to model all the atoms in a macroscopic widget, ever. It’s beyond pointless.
I know, it’s my job. But as much as we like to obsess about the mechanisms for dislocations climbing and solute interactions, nobody cares when they are designing an aircraft. They have macroscopic laws they put in their finite elements code. These are perfectly adequate to describe most known modes of failures of industrial alloys. Nobody is going to model all the atoms in a macroscopic widget, ever. It’s beyond pointless.