ANYONE who鈥檚 chipped a favourite dinner plate knows how brittle ceramics can
be. But this frailty won鈥檛 affect a new elasticated ceramic, which avoids
cracking by stretching.
Byung-Nam Kim and his colleagues at the National Institute of Materials and
Chemicals Research in Ibaraki, Japan, report in Nature (vol 413, p 288)
that their ceramic behaves like plasticine, and can reach 10 times its original
length when heated to 1650 掳C.