[stana (OP)]

Hey,
Can someone please tell me the properties of Clay, Cement and Glass? Ive been looking all over but cant get a straight forward anwswer.

Thanks

[JimBob]

First, there are so many properties - especially of "clay" - that it is very difficult to know where to start. Clay is a very broad term that applies to over 30 different mineral families that are each a spectrum of compositions. The properties change as composition changes. Cements vary in composition as well, as it is composed of clays and lime - some having salt and other additives to speed up or slow down the coring properties. Also "ceramics" is a very brad catch-all term.

If you can be somewhat more specific about what you are looking for pottery ceramics, tile ceramics, insulator ceramics - which are still very large categories - I'll do my best to help. Also, what specific properties are you looking for?

[stana (OP)]

Thanks for the reply JimBob

I only need to know the SIMPLE property(s) of clay

for e.g the property for lead is that it is heavy

or have i got the totally wrong idea of what property means..?

Thanks

[blakestyger]

Heaviness is a physical property that would best be described by its density (weight per unit volume).
Chemical properties relate to chemical reactivity where the substance undergoes change that makes it something else - alters its chemical make-up.
It's difficult to see what sort of chemical property can be assigned to these substances as they are so relatively unreactive - except glass that dissolves in hydrofluoric acid.
Perhaps you mean physical properties, such as specific heat, conductivity, tensile strength etc,?

[JimBob]

Clay - a sheet silicate

The structure of these is IN GENERAL somewhat similar to that of kaolinite, which is shown below and is from a teaching syllabus from this site(http://pubpages.unh.edu/~harter/crystal.htm) There is a more complete description of clays here as well.



The area marked with the dots is the area where water is very often found and trapped. It is this ability of clays to hold water which causes clays to be slippery to walk on and make such things as cement and other ceramics possible. If clay could not hold water, there were be no civilization as we know it as there would be no cement.

Cement

The chemical properties of clay itself are really relatively unimportant as it is this ability of the clay to hold water that makes all of the rest of the Roman & Portland cement possible. These are hydraulic-setting cements. The water in the clay layers combines with the lime in the cement to for different, harder minerals and chemical compounds.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_cement for a much more in depth discussion. Also follow the links to the important terms.

As the materials used for cements vary so greatly, the different types will have different chemical properties. As my experience with cements is mainly in those used to bond iron pipe into an oil well drill hole for production of oil and gas, I am most familiar with this type of cement. For general info on a small sample of  this type of cements, see http://www.logwell.com/tech/cbl/cement_problems.html

Quartz

Quartz is easy. It is non-reactive with most everything except strong acids. Glass, which is just quartz melted together, is also non-reactive to most thing as well

[Make it Lady]

Clay is an alkali. I used to have to test clay content of sand when I worked in a sand quarry. I love a good titration.

[JimBob]

What? A bit of science from this person? Yeah!

[Make it Lady]

I think you will find that I have contributed to quite a few threads, it is just that I have little interest in Geology as I think it should belong to geography and good riddance to it....blurrr!

[JimBob]

Snotty wench!