Question: what have you found out so far?

Andy Norton answered on 13 Jun 2011:

That’s an interesting question! I have found out a number of things related to ceramics. What we expected to happen was that we would see deformation twins (did you see the picture of these on my profile) in samples that have been compressed. This is what people have seen in other tests that are similar to mine. However, interestingly, we actually found these twins (which are a sort of rearragement of atoms) in samples that HADN’T even been compressed. It looks like these twins are formed when we press the powder or put the powder in the furnace. That’s a pretty interesting, and confusing, result! We didn’t find anymore twins in compressed samples, but we did find lots of cracks. There appear to be lots of very small cracks (like a few microns, which is a thousandth of a millimetre, along) that form before the sample breaks. We thought that these wouldn’t form. So, as with lots of science, we have found things out, but we haven’t found things out that we expected to find!