They can be found in products like computers
(rated 7 of the top 20 products that had the greatest impact
on the quality of life in the 20th century!), snow skis and
snowboards, automobiles (sparkplugs and ceramic engine parts
found in racecars), watches (quartz tuning forks-the time keeping
devices in watches), and phone lines. They can also be
found on space shuttles, appliances (enamel coatings), and airplanes
(nose cones).
This class are inorganic
and nonmetallic material and is essential to our daily lifestyle.
Your cereal bowl is most likely ceramic. Ceramic and materials
engineers are the people who design the processes (ie. methods)
in which these products can be made, create new types of ceramic
products, and find different uses for ceramic products in everyday
life.
Depending on their method
of formation, ceramics can be dense or lightweight. Typically,
they will demonstrate excellent strength and hardness properties;
however, they are often brittle in nature. Ceramics can
also be formed to serve either as an electrically conductive
materials or an insulator, a material preventing the flow of
electricity.
Some ceramics, like superconductors, also
display magnetic properties.
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Brick is a very common engineered
material that generally contains three of the most common ceramics:
Alumina, Iron Oxide and Silicon Oxide.
But do you know that soda-lime
glass is a ceramic too?
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