Works in Progress

What do a cutting-edge bone implant and Mrs Potts from Beauty and the Beast have in common? Both are made from porcelain, a material humans first made over 3,000 years ago and are still reinventing today. worksinprogress.co/issue/eve… We focus on advances in computing, but the world around us has been transformed just as much by materials science. And within this already underrated field sits an even more underrated material. Plenty of people have heard of semiconductors, but almost no one thinks about porcelain. For @WorksInProgressMag, @CharlesCMann wrote about its remarkable journey: - Porcelain is basically an ancient nanotechnology. 3000 years ago, Chinese potters found that firing a white clay called kaolin to around 1,200°C transformed it completely: its crystals get rebuilt, producing a material that is hard, dense, and sometimes translucent. Nobody knew why it worked at the time: they discovered it by trial and error. - Europeans prized porcelain immensely – but had no clue had to make it. When porcelain arrived in Europe in the 12th century, it was so superior to European ceramics that aristocrats called it "white gold." But despite attempting to reverse-engineer it, Europeans failed to create porcelain for centuries. - Fake it until you make porcelain. Böttger, an alchemist imprisoned in the early 1700s for falsely claiming to make gold, was set to work with a legitimate scientist on making porcelain. Remarkably, the scientist succeeded where others had failed for centuries, creating the first European porcelain cup. But he did not live to profit: ever the liar, Böttger claimed his discovery for himself. - Less slippery when wet. Innovation in materials science picked up again in the 20th century and continues to this day, producing Porcelain 3.0. Today, porcelain can be found across a surprising number of household objects: from kitchen countertops to tiles that become less slippery when wet, which also makes them safer. - The most futuristic use of all: researchers can now 3D-print porous porcelain scaffolds to repair damaged bone. The advantage is that blood vessels and bone cells grow into the scaffold’s tiny openings, while the scaffold slowly dissolves as new bone replaces it, allowing a bone-like natural structure to persist. Porcelain has already gone from fragile imperial teacups to artificial joints and scaffolds that help bone regrow. But its 3000 year long story is far from over: expect this underrated material to play new roles in everything from medicine to architecture in the coming decades!