Ceramics,Composites and Polymers

Ceramics, Composites and Polymers:

Ceramics:

Ceramics are non-metal solids with high melting points that aren't made from carbon-based compounds.

• Some ceramics can be made from clay.
• Clay is a soft material when it's dug up out the ground, so can be moulded into different shapes.
• When it's fired at high temperatures, it hardens to form a clay ceramic.
• It's ablility to be moulded when wet and then hardened makes clay ideal for making pottery and bricks.
• Another example of a ceramic is glass. Glass is generally transparent, can be moulded when hot and can be brittle when thin.
• Most glass made is soda-lime glass, which is made by heating a mixture of limestone, sand and sodium carbonate (soda) until it melts. When the mixture cools it comes out as glass.
• Borosilicate glass has a higher melting point than soda-lime glass. It's made in the same way as soda-lime glass, using a mixture of sand and boron trioxide.

Composites:

Composites are made of on material embedded in another. Fibres or fragments of a material (known as the reinforcement) are surrounded by a matrix acting as a binder. The properties of a composite depend on the properties of the materials it is made from. For example:

• Fibreglass consists of fibres of glass embedded in a matrix made of…