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A division ofCANBIS(Canadian Building & Interior Services) |
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1215 Twinney Drive, Unit #5,
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Glossary of Terms
Ceramic:
A ceramic is an inorganic, non-metallic solid prepared by the action
of heat and subsequent cooling. Ceramic materials may have a
crystalline or partly crystalline structure, or may be amorphous (e.g.,
a glass). Because most common ceramics are crystalline, the definition
of ceramic is often restricted to inorganic crystalline materials, as
opposed to the non-crystalline glasses.
The earliest ceramics were pottery objects made from clay, either by
itself or mixed with other materials, hardened in fire. Later ceramics
were glazed and fired to create a coloured, smooth surface. Ceramics now
include domestic, industrial and building products and art objects. In
the 20th century, new ceramic materials were developed for use in
advanced ceramic engineering; for example, in semiconductors.
The word ceramic comes from a Greek word meaning, "of pottery" or "for
pottery". The earliest mention on the word
"ceramic" is the Mycenaean Greek ke-ra-me-we, "workers of ceramics". Ceramic may be used as an
adjective describing a material, product or process; or as a singular
noun, or, more commonly, as a plural noun, ceramics.
Tile:
A tile is a manufactured piece of hard-wearing material such as
ceramic, stone, metal, or even glass. Tiles are generally used for
covering roofs, floors, walls, showers, or other objects such as
tabletops. Alternatively, tile can sometimes refer to similar units made
from lightweight materials such as perlite, wood, and mineral wool,
typically used for wall and ceiling applications. Less precisely, the
modern term can refer to any sort of construction tile or similar
object, such as rectangular counters used in playing games (see
tile-based game). The word is derived from the French word tuile, which
is, in turn, from the Latin word tegula, meaning a roof tile composed of
baked clay.
Tiles are often used to form wall and floor coverings, and can range
from simple square tiles to complex mosaics. Tiles are most often made
from ceramic, with a hard glaze finish, but other materials are also
commonly used, such as glass, marble, granite, slate, and reformed
ceramic slurry, which is cast in a mould and fired.
Mosaic:
Mosaic is the art of creating images with an assemblage of small pieces of coloured glass, stone, or other materials. It may be a technique of decorative art, an aspect of interior decoration, or of cultural and spiritual significance as in a cathedral. Small pieces, normally roughly cubic, of stone or glass of different colors, known as tesserae, (diminutive tessellae), are used to create a pattern or picture.
Granite:
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic,
igneous rock. Granites usually have a medium to coarse grained texture.
Occasionally some individual crystals (phenocrysts) are larger than the
groundmass in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic
rock with a porphyritic texture is sometimes known as a porphyry.
Granites can be pink to gray in color, depending on their chemistry and
mineralogy. By definition, granite has a color index (i.e. the
percentage of the rock made up of dark minerals) of less than 25%.
Outcrops of granite tend to form tors, and rounded massifs. Granites
sometimes occur in circular depressions surrounded by a range of hills,
formed by the metamorphic aureole or hornfels.
Granite is nearly always massive (lacking internal structures), hard and
tough, and therefore it has gained widespread use as a construction
stone. The average density of granite is located between 2.65[1] and
2.75 g/cm3, its compressive strength usually lies above 200 MPa and its
viscosity at standard temperature and pressure is 3-6 • 1019 Pa·s.
The word granite comes from the Latin granum, a grain, in reference to
the coarse-grained structure of such a crystalline rock.
Granitoid is used as a descriptive field term for general, light
coloured,
coarse-grained igneous rocks for which a more specific name requires
petrographic examination.
Porcelain:
Porcelain is a ceramic material made by heating raw materials,
generally including clay in the form of kaolin, in a kiln to
temperatures between 1,200 °C (2,192 °F) and 1,400 °C (2,552 °F). The
toughness, strength, and translucence of porcelain arise mainly from the
formation of glass and the mineral mullite within the fired body at
these high temperatures.
Porcelain derives its present name from old Italian porcellana (cowrie
shell) because of its resemblance to the translucent surface of the
shell. Porcelain can informally be referred to as "china" in some
English-speaking countries, as China was the birth place of porcelain
making. Properties associated with porcelain include low permeability
and elasticity; considerable strength, hardness, glassiness,
brittleness, whiteness, translucence, and resonance; and a high
resistance to chemical attack and thermal shock.
For the purposes of trade, the Combined Nomenclature of the European
Communities defines porcelain as being "completely vitrified, hard,
impermeable (even before glazing), white or artificially coloured,
translucent (except when of considerable thickness) and resonant."
However, the term porcelain lacks a universal definition and has "been
applied in a very unsystematic fashion to substances of diverse kinds
which have only certain surface-qualities in common" (Burton 1906).
Porcelain is used to make table, kitchen, sanitary, and decorative
wares; objects of fine art; and tiles. Its high resistance to the
passage of electricity makes porcelain an excellent insulator. Dental
porcelain is used to make false teeth, caps, crowns and veneers.
Marble:
Marble is a rock resulting from metamorphism of sedimentary carbonate
rocks, (most commonly limestone or dolomite rock). Metamorphism causes
variable recrystallization of the original carbonate mineral grains. The
resulting marble rock is typically composed of an interlocking mosaic of
carbonate crystals. Primary sedimentary textures and structures of the
original carbonate rock (protolith) have typically been modified or
destroyed.
Pure white marble is the result of metamorphism of a very pure
(silicate-poor) limestone or dolomite protolith. The characteristic
swirls and veins of many coloured marble varieties are usually due to
various mineral impurities such as clay, silt, sand, iron oxides, or
chert which were originally present as grains or layers in the
limestone. Green coloration is often due to serpentine resulting from
originally high magnesium limestone or dolostone with silica impurities.
These various impurities have been mobilized and recrystallized by the
intense pressure and heat of the metamorphism.
Vitrification
Glass transition or vitrification refers to the transformation of a
glass-forming liquid
into a glass, which usually
occurs upon rapid cooling.