Advancing the science of Ceramic's engineering - 6-inches/drop!
With a
tape measure, a stepladder and an anxious crowd of ceramic students
looking on, the official Mug Drop Contest recently shattered the dreams
of indestructible chalices.
Meanwhile the winning cup, made of a tough ceramic composite by students from the University of Missouri-Rolla, left a dent in the pavement.
The long-established team crushed the
competition—nearly 20 other undergraduate schools. Newcomers New Mexico
Tech placed second with their clay cup.
The competition
Keramos, a fraternity of students studying ceramics,
has sponsored the Mug Drop for more than two decades. This year’s
competition was held at the American Ceramic Society’s annual meeting
in Cocoa Beach, FL in January.
Entrants abide by a slew of rules. The mug must be
made solely of ceramics, have a handle, and be fired to a minimum
temperature of 572 degrees Fahrenheit.
To prove the materials aren't toxic, students have to drink out of their mug in front of a judge before the drop.
"A winning mug takes ingenuity, creativity and a
really strong material," said Keramos president Matt Dejneka, a
materials scientist at Corning Incorporated.
Similar to a high-jump competition, contestants can
pass on dropping their mug at shorter heights and enter at their chosen
elevation. The contest starts with a dead-drop at 6 inches above
ground, and increases in 6-inch increments to a maximum height of 12
feet.
To move on to the next drop, the mug mustn't leak.
Brimming with strategy
New Mexico Tech took second place with a cup made of
New Mexican stoneware clay and full of strategy. They designed a
sacrificial bulbous bottom that broke on their first attempt, safely
moving the protected inner-mug on to its next and final round.
But without the cushioning of the double bottom, New
Mexico Tech couldn't match the 12-foot drop of the University of
Missouri-Rolla (UMR) mug. Jeff Rodelas and his UMR teammates entered
the blue-ribbon mug that dropped unscathed. They depended on the
tried-and-true mug design of their predecessors.
"Simplicity is the key. Every year we can rely on this design that can perform pretty well," Rodelas told LiveScience. "We're trying to come up with a way to make the mug better with new materials."
The team made the hardy winning mugs out of aluminum
oxide and zirconium oxide. Zirconium in another form, cubic zirconia,
looks a lot like diamonds and is used in jewelry. Aluminum oxide makes
a sturdy artificial hip. The zirconium oxide in the mug makes the
aluminum oxide tougher to crack.
Now the group is looking at silicon dioxide fiber used on space shuttles for possible inclusion in future mugs.
The society holds the mug drop competition and a
ceramic golf ball and golf club competition each year at its annual
meeting, said Hammetter, who also is a manager at Sandia National
Laboratories.
"That is a tradition that has been going on at
least the 20 years that I have been involved" with the society,
Hammetter said. "It's kind of neat."
The competitions typically draw big crowds and
give students a chance to show their ingenuity in front of ceramics
manufacturers and other future employers — such as national
laboratories, Hammetter said.
"Ceramics are a class of materials that have
been around since ancient times," he said. "People usually think of
them in terms of pots or whitewear like porcelain. But they're also
used in structural things: automotives, space shuttle tiles and
electronics."
Contestants generally try to design mugs out of high-tech materials so they won't break.
Only one member of a team was required to
successfully drop his or her mug from each height, so some of the UMR students
were able to minimize damage to their personal mugs until the later
rounds.
Sheena Foster of UMR says she got the
"most-dropped mug" award.
"My mug was kind of a sacrificial mug in the
team effort," says Foster, a junior in ceramic engineering from Camdenton,
Mo. "I dropped it from every height. I think it eventually broke at about
nine feet and was
eliminated."
Contestants were allowed to continue, as long
as their mugs could still hold
liquid.
Jeffrey Rodelas, also from Camdenton, says his
mug never even chipped and, in fact, "it actually dented the asphalt a few
times."
After designing and strategy meetings, it took
the UMR students about two weeks to create their mugs in anticipation of the
contest. The mugs were made in a slip-cast mold and heated to 1,550 degrees
Celsius.
Rodelas, a senior in ceramic engineering, says
the keys to making a strong ceramic mug are to keep the handle small and make
sure all of the surface edges are
rounded.
Winning teams don't get any big prizes, but they do get recognition, Hammetter said.
"They'll probably get their pictures in the Ceramic Society magazine," he said. "That's good advertising for the school."
