It is common to spot groups of students wandering around the Aobayama Campus at about noon wearing the same jackets. They actually belong to the same laboratory and wear the same personalized jacket with a motto and logo related to their field of research. Even though these laboratories can be found in all departments, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering seems to be the one which includes the most such groups. Like the famous white coat of a laboratory worker or the one used in the medical field, the tradition of a heavy duty jacket to protect its wearer doing hard manual labour involved in metallurgical processes or when dealing with high temperature and metallic materials might be a testimony of the history of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. Even though such kind of research is still done nowadays in some laboratories, the researches being done in this department has evolved and broadened but the tradition still remains and has become a symbol of group membership.