Clay Pot Vs Ceramic

Clay and ceramic are often used to describe different materials for making pottery.

Clay pot vs ceramic.

Why choose between plastic vs clay pots when you can have the best of both worlds. Like terracotta pots they are made by firing clay in kilns but are then painted or glazed in decorative colors and designs. Porous ceramic pots also called unglazed clay allow air and water movement through the sides of the pot. Clay is a type of ceramic but not all ceramics are made of clay.

Glazed clay pots are somewhat of an intermediate between plastic and unglazed clay pots. These go through a mechanized manufacturing process which necessarily uses chemicals. For example clay has chemically bonded water in it which will cause it to slake down disintegrate when a dried clay object is put in water. Once heated fired to between 660 and 1470 f 350 and 800 c the clay is converted to ceramic and will never dissolve again.

As nouns the difference between ceramic and clay is that ceramic is uncountable a hard brittle material that is produced through burning of nonmetallic minerals at high temperatures while clay is a mineral substance made up of small crystals of silica and alumina that is ductile when moist. Air movement stimulates root growth which results in healthier plants. However if a ceramic pot is left out in the cold weather it can still crack. The commercially popular clay pot cooking sets are nowhere close to this one.

Clay is created by the by the chemical weathering and geothermal alteration of igneous rocks into hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates. Ceramic containers or stoneware are made from finely textured light colored clay and then glazed. The other two words are an matter of subculture and semantics. These containers are fired at a high kiln temperature which reduces the pot s porousness and vulnerability to the elements.

That should give us a clue. As a adjective ceramic is made of material produced by the high. The later is mostly made from ceramic clay a composition of stoneware porcelain or terracotta. Most often the precursor rock is a type of granite.

Clay can be thought of in terms of geological raw material which is the foundation product for the firing in the kiln which produces terra cotta and ceramics. Clay is a natural material that comes from the ground and ceramics are various materials that harden when heated including clay. All clay is a ceramic material but there are other ceramic materials as well. They are also coated with chemical glazes and enamels.