Material science 101

Being my inquisitive self, I have decided I would like to learn how the Finite Element analysis actually works. However having studied biomedical engineering this was not an obvious subject and I do not have the necessary background information to grasp it. So what do you do? 

I just finished the first lecture and what stuck was the following. I liked the part of putting energy usage in perspective. That we as dutch citizens have on average about 6 kW/s working for us compared to ~2 kW/s for the average world dweller is quite a difference.

Everyday energy costs, note the amount of energy it takes to power a house/car 

Moving on to the actual material science part of the lecture. I learned the basic properties of materials. Which you know by experience but I need to find how to get an intuitive grasp of these concepts. Take Elastic modulus for example... what does that mean, which materials have a high/ low Emod? high would be steel and low would be plastics... meaning... meaning... meaning... meaning that steel is harder to bend than plastics, right? correct me if I am wrong. 

The picture below helps kind off to make sense of these properties: 

All in all an interesting lecture and I am determined to follow at least 3 more lectures. The key to happiness is to set low expectations  :P