The Magic of Ceramics

Works great, just what i wanted.

Richerson gives us a nicely written explanation of the many uses of ceramics, that go far afield from the original and ancient role in pottery. The bulk of the book should disabuse you of any preconceptions that ceramics is just for the arts and crafts folks. Rather we learn in chapter 4 about vital inventions like lasers and fiber optics. These particular inventions make possible the Web as a global spanning entity with massive bandwidth travelling via laser light through those fibers. So if nothing else, you should remember this from the text.Far more is possible with ceramics. Take the use of silicon nitride as a cutting tool in a lathe for machining metal parts. A recent discovery (in the 1970s). It is a little amusing however that the author saw it necessary to explain what a lathe is - "like a tire rotates on the axle of your car". But in retrospect this is telling. Nowadays the expected readership might have no experience with ever seeing a lathe in a machine shop, let alone use one ! Crikey. When I was in high school, the boys at least had to do metalwork, which meant working in a machine shop with lathes. I guess we really are in a post industrial age.The book is richly endowed with many colourful photos and diagrams that well reinforce the narrative.The level of discussion is suitable for a 4th or 5th year high school student or a freshman undergraduate. There seem to be no equations, as there would be in an actual text for a typical physics or engineering undergraduate course. Instead, the descriptions are readily understandable by a broadly educated reader.

The Magic of Ceramics is a well-written book that reads similar to a upper-level high school textbook. It was amazing for me to find out how limited my knowledge of ceramics really was. As an artist, I was previously only familiar with the more traditional forms of ceramics (you will find them in chapters two and three).However, I like this book more for my son (who is in his mid-teens). He has a fascination with acquiring a wide-range of knowledge just for fun.This certainly would fulfill the curiosity of any other like-minded individuals who also enjoy reading about anything science-related for fun. You will see how far-reaching the involvement of ceramics is in our society. By learning about ceramics, one could easily come away from this book feeling that they've learned a bit about EVERYTHING.The Magic of Ceramics will clear up any misconceptions one may have regarding ceramics, as it takes the reader through its birth as well as its various uses throughout history. You will then learn in-depth about modern ceramics and chapters of specific fields that use ceramics-even projections about future products and uses.This book is VERY detailed, without being too cluttered by figures. Still, there are charts/graphs to illustrate examples and chemical formulas...I really like how there are points throughout it highlighting "Amazing Facts." Ideally, I wish this there were more of these, and that the book also included study questions at the end of each chapter.The Magic of Ceramics is highly-informative. I recommend it particularly for anyone who is in a career (or is interested in one) involving ceramics or a field that includes any of a multitude of its applications.

It doesn't require hyperbole to explain why this book deserves five full stars.Interestingly, the prior (1st) edition of "The Magic of Ceramics" summarizes in a near-perfect way the role of ceramics in our world. In the foreword to that first edition, Bonnie Dunbar (a NASA astronaut) states, "Without ceramics, we wouldn't have television, miniature computers (including iPhones and other smart phones, my own comment), extraordinary action in computer-generated movie scenes, digital electronics and wireless communications, the Internet, the Space Shuttle, CDs, synthetic gemstones, or even cars. We wouldn't be able to refine metals from ores or cast them into useful shapes. We wouldn't have many of the modern tools of medicine such as ultrasonic imaging, CT scans, and dental reconstructions. How can ceramics do so many things? Seems like magic, doesn't it?"What is even more magical is that in the more than ten years since that first edition of this book was published, hundreds and probably thousands of NEW applications of ceramics have been introduced into our world. And if the 1967 movie "The Graduate" were updated, that one line in the movie about "plastics" being the future, would now be changed to "ceramics", because ceramics are much more our new future than are plastics (and for many reasons).I won't try to include all of the uses for ceramics in this short review, but I would like to tempt you with some examples: iPhone innards, windows, lightbulbs, modern water faucet seals, toilets and kitchen/bathroom sinks, pottery-as-art, cosmetics components, tiles of all kinds, internet and computer switches and other parts, knives and cutlery, fiber optics, lighted keypads on smartphones, lasers, optical equipment such as microscopes and telescopes, lightweight and strong components for airliners & jet engines, silicon nitride tools for faster and more accurate cutting, reinforcement for pipes, utility poles, bridges, concrete, storage tanks, satellite communications components, computer chips, automobile systems, smart toys, robots, ocean-floor mapping, non-intrusive inspection of parts, motors, skis, musical instruments, dental repair, joint implants, heart valves, prosthetics, spark plugs, oxygen sensors, all kinds of furnace linings, heat exchangers, many types of industrial tools, bearings, computer storage disks, compact lighting, fuel cells, advanced nuclear reactor components, nuclear waste encapsulation, LED lighting, etc. WHEW!Just read this incredible book at your leisure (as some other reviewer said, you can pick and choose chapters to read, almost at random), and you will start to realize why "plastics" have such a limited range of future usefulness, as ceramics take over so many functions that are needed by our complex society...