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Four Materials You See Every Day
The house you live in, the window in its wall, the plate you eat from and the grain on that plate all depend on four families of chemical materials: cement, glass, ceramics and fertilisers. Exam setters love them because every question has a short, factual answer: what is it made from, what is added to it, and what is it used for.
Cement binds bricks and stones; glass is a transparent, brittle, non-crystalline solid made from sand; ceramics are hard, heat-resistant objects made by firing clay; and fertilisers feed plants with nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.
For each material, store three things: the raw materials, one special additive or property, and one use. For example, cement: limestone and clay, gypsum added at the end, and it sets by reacting with water. That template is enough to answer most SSC, Railway, CTET and BPSC TRE-4 questions on this topic.
1. Gypsum is added in small quantity to cement clinker during grinding in order to:
2. The two main raw materials used to make Portland cement are:
3. Ordinary soda-lime glass is manufactured by melting together:
4. Which type of glass expands very little on heating and is therefore used for laboratory apparatus and ovenware?
5. Addition of cobalt oxide to molten glass gives the glass which colour?
6. Among the common fertilisers, which has the highest percentage of nitrogen?
7. The fertiliser diammonium phosphate (DAP) supplies which plant nutrients?
8. Who first prepared urea in the laboratory from an inorganic compound, ammonium cyanate, in 1828?