Mug Drop Committee
The Mug Drop committee has met on several occasions in order to come up with ideas and create an unbreakable mug for the ACerS convention. We have come up with several ideas, which include sacrificial fracture mugs with an outer porous layer made by vacuum infiltration of polymer sponge (interpolating foam) and subsequent burn off of polymer to produce a porous layer, silicon carbide matrix systems, E-glass and S-glass matrices and use of robotically controlled deposition of colloids. Our committee has formed groups to work on feasible ideas and have met to learn the various ceramic processes required in making the mugs from various faculty and post-graduate students.
We have been spending time in the lab making samples of each method. Upon testing of the mugs, we then made the finished mugs to be used in the Mug Drop Competition in April 2005. Not only did we concentrate on creating a mug for the strength portion of the competition, but this year we also focused on an aesthetic mug. We are hoping to make the competition more interesting this year by having multiple mugs created by different methods that still possess high ceramic strength properties.
