About ceramics

What makes ceramics useful

Vocabulary
● Ceramics
● Brittle
● Heat resistance
● Unreactive
● Crystals
● Lattice structure
● Bonds
Objectives

● State the meaning of: ceramic.

● Explain how the properties of ceramics make them useful.
● Justify the use of a ceramic material for a given application.
● Explain how the properties of a substance depend on the bonding
and arrangement of atoms (in terms of strength and number of
bonds only)
Uses of ceramics
Lattice structure in ceramic materials
Answers
1 a- It does not allow electricity to pass through it.

b- It prevents electricity flowing from the cables into the pylon’s metal structure.

c- plastic, wood, glass, etc. (many other possible

answers)

2- two of: strong, hard, very unreactive, can be shaped exactly

3 a- two of: heat resistant, good insulator, high melting point, non-toxic

b- brittle
Answers
4- china for cups and plates, glass for bottles, porcelain for electrical pylon
insulators (other answers possible)
5 a- clay and sand
b- Both are heated to very high temperatures. Glass is made from sand but china
is made from
clay.
6 a- Smaller crystals (in X) are formed when the molten ceramic is cooled quickly.
b- Larger crystals form on slow cooling as the atoms have more time to form the
lattice structure.
Answers
7 a- lattice

b- They represent different elements (silicon, oxygen, aluminium).

8- There are lots of strong bonds that have to be broken to melt or break a
ceramic.