The rapid growth of the Internet due to the popularity of the World Wide Web is opening the way for the field of materials science and engineering to increase its name recognition among high school students and incoming university freshmen. Members of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University have produced the Materials by Design web site (http://www.mse.cornell.edu/engri111/) to provide a broad introduction to materials science and engineering. Via a series of interesting examples, the web site illustrates the importance of materials to our lives and provides an introduction to materials and their properties.