Resources: Concrete, earthenware (e.g. terracotta pot), brick, glass (e.g. beaker) and porcelain (e.g evaporating dish or crucible).
Support Handout: Page 1; Support sheet with examples for each of the table headings.
Core Handout: Table to record results and questions to check understanding. Challenge task to suggest uses of ceramics in bathrooms and kitchens.
The properties of ceramics is not included in KS2 learning, so use the starter task to revise properties of materials and connect this to ceramics.
Ceramics once referred purely to pottery and to articles made by firing materials extracted from Earth.
Today, the term has a much broader definition. What can ceramics be used to make?
Ask the students to create an individual and class mind-map to generate ideas of what ceramics can make.
Using the presentation slides, discuss the properties of ceramics and ensure that the students understand the meaning of the properties. Then, use the slides to show how ceramics are made. Notes can be added to the handout sheet as you go through presentation. The students should look at a variety of ceramics and identify their properties.
Career Film: Take a tour around Rolls Royce SMR's Heritage Museum in Derby to find out about Sravani Murtinty's job. Sravani works as a Component Design Engineer for Rolls Royce SMR.
Expert Film: This is Sravani Murtinty. Sravani works as a Component Design Engineer for Rolls Royce SMR. Listen to Sravani as she describes the properties of ceramics.
Ceramics Challenge
The students should look at some examples of different ceramics from around the home or school. Ask the students to research or use class notes to state raw materials and how the ceramic is made and describe the ceramics’ properties. They should then fill in the table in the handout for each of the ceramics.
Support: Page in handout providing guidance and examples for completing the table.
Challenge: Question in handout to extend students’ thinking, relating the use of a ceramic to its properties.
Discuss students’ observations and how a particular use of a ceramic is linked to their unique properties.
When the word ceramic is mentioned, the image that is typically conjured is that of clay or pottery; these are materials that are dug from the ground, moulded and then fired to ensure they maintain their shape. The category of ceramic is much bigger than just the stereotypical ceramics; ceramics are a very difficult type of material to define as the category contains multiple different materials that have a variety of properties (including properties typically associated with metals). To classify a material as a ceramic, it is more helpful to think of what the material is not.
There are materials that can be classified as metals; these contain only metal elements and tend to have typical metal properties (there are always exceptions). There are also materials that can be classified as organic materials. These organic materials are carbon based compounds that exhibit a variety of different properties and contain a variety of elements but primarily contain carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Then we have materials that are ceramics. These are non-metal, inorganic materials that can are typical compounds that can contain a mixture of non-metal compounds or metal and non-metal compounds.
Ceramic materials typically have both strong ionic and covalent bonds present between particles. As a result, this can make the materials incredibly tough and resistant to bending, however this can also result in a brittleness that is typical of ceramic materials. Most ceramics are tough, hard and good insulators of both electricity and heat; however there are exceptions to both of these things. Ceramics also tend to be chemically inert due to the bonding present.
Bricks are a good example of ceramics. They are made by baking clay that has been moulded. They are very hard and strong under compression which makes it difficult for them to be crushed under their own weight. Pottery is another example of a typical ceramic. Pottery is made by moulding clay into a shape that is desired after baking in a kiln. The clay is made stronger through the high temperatures. Just like bricks, clay is brittle. Therefore, if you drop a plate, it is likely to break.
Outside of the stereotypical definition, both graphite and diamond are considered to be ceramic materials. Graphite is brittle but cannot be compacted. It does, however, conduct both heat and electricity and, due to its ability to allow layers within its structure to slide, can be used as a lubricant. Diamond is more typical of a ceramic as it demonstrates the hardness of ceramics as well as the excellent insulation that ceramics are known to have.