Each year, the ACerS Basic Science Division sponsors a ceramographic competition at the Society’s Annual Meeting. The competition’s top award is the Roland B. Snow Award, presented to the Best of Show winner of the competition. All of this year’s entries went on display at the recent MS&T’09 conference in Pittsburgh where they wowed the participants. The best of the entries also appear on the back covers of the Journal of the American Ceramic Society throughout the year.
If you’ve never seen one before, these ceramographs are typically beautiful and other-worldly. Besides a cool way to display some of the art intrinsic to nature, the competition helps promote the use of microscopy and microanalysis as tools in the scientific investigation of ceramic materials.
The just-completed contest even had some 3D entries that, of course, required those snazzy blue/magenta cellophane-cardboard glasses. One of these 3D images, by Matthew Sullivan and Daniel Mumm from the University of California, Irvine, won the Snow Best of Show award. I’ve posted this winner and another 3D entry below (they both work onscreen if you have the glasses!), plus some of my other favorite images from the display.
Click on the images to enlarge:
(3D) Spinel, by Matthew Sullivan & Daniel Mumm, University of California, Irvine. Best of Show.
(3D) Titania, by George Ferko & Martin P. Harmer, Lehigh University 3rd place, Undergraduate Studies category.
Zinc oxide, by Irene Paulauskas, Lynn Boatner, Larry Walker & Gerald Jellison, Oak Ridge National Lab. 2nd place SEM category.
Zinc oxide, by Irene Paulauskas, Lynn Boatner, Larry Walker & Gerald Jellison, Oak Ridge National Lab. 2nd place SEM category.
Alumina sol-gel coating, by Taek Bo Kim, Sreya Dutta, Helen Chan & Richard Vinci, Lehigh University 1st place, Undergraduate Studies category.
SiO2 spheres, by Taek Bo Kim, Sreya Dutta, Helen Chan & Richard Vinci, Lehigh University 1st place, Undergraduate Studies category.
SEM of MCrAlY droplet, by M.D. Weeks and D.R. Mumm, University of California, Irvine
Aluminum oxide film, by I.Y. Knoke & Y. Gogotsi, Drexel University, and B. Dyatkin & S. McIntosh, AlumiFuel Power Inc.