Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World

by Mark Miodownik

Unlike metals, plastics, or glass, ceramics cannot be melted and poured. Or rather, we don’t have the materials that can withstand the temperatures required to contain such liquids. Ceramics are made from the same stuff as mountains, rocks, and stone, whose liquid form is the lava and magma of the Earth. But even if lava could be captured and poured into a mold, it would not form a strong ceramic—certainly not one that you would recognize or make a cup from. What forms is, of course, volcanic rock, which is full of holes and imperfections. It takes millions of years of heat and pressure deep inside the Earth to turn such stuff into the so-called igneous rocks and stones that make up mountains. For these reasons, attempts to make artificial substitutes for rock either use chemical reactions, which is how cement and concrete work, or, in the case of pottery, involve heating up clay in a furnace, not to melt it, but instead to take advantage of a very unusual property of crystals.