mullite
noun · first attested 1924
Almost every porcelain cup and furnace brick in the world is held together by needles of a mineral named after a Hebridean island.
An aluminum silicate, the only stable binary phase of alumina and silica at atmospheric pressure.
56.4500°N -6.0000°W · Q111444
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
- Attested
- 1924
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Isle of Mull
- In English
mullite
Norman Bowen, Joseph Greig and Emanuel Zies described mullite in 1924 from Nuns Pass at Carsaig on the Isle of Mull, where Tertiary basalt had melted the sedimentary rock it intruded. The natural mineral is rare, but mullite forms whenever clay is fired hot enough, which makes it the backbone phase of porcelain and refractory ceramics. Most of the world's mullite is therefore manufactured rather than mined.