Talk:Zirconium dioxide
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bold text
Contents |
[edit] Jewelry
Shouldn't someone mention how much they look like diamonds?
- I think they mentioned that the two types of stone are difficult to disti--65.12.46.114 22:15, 25 September 2007 (UTC)nguish, and that most jewelers have a thermal conductivity tester for just that purpose. Reading Uncle Tungsten a while back, I noticed how Oliver Sacks was taught as a kid just how cold diamonds feel when pressed to one's lips; I wonder if this wouldn't be just as accurate a test for thermal conductivity, but without the fancy instruments.--Joel 23:12, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Article name
Zirconium dioxide would be a better name for this article, or at least more in keeping with Wikipedia:Naming conventions (chemistry). I would do the move, except that this article seems to have come from there. What do people think? Physchim62 22:29, 24 August 2005 (UTC)
Yes, it seems to already have been moved (back) to ziconium dioxide. Now I'd like to ask: "shouldn't it be 'zirconium oxide'?" Apparently this is what it is listed under in Chemical Abstracts. Apparently the oxidation state of Zr is always +4 (but see the discussion at Talk:Zirconium), so is it necessary to specify stoichiometry if there's no alternative? — DIV 128.250.204.118 09:34, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] great article
Great article on zirconia, covers all of the high points of the material. -ceramic engineer—Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.184.91.110 (talk • contribs)
[edit] high temperature conductivity
"Zirconia is one of few compounds that actually becomes conductive at high temperatures"
Increasing conductivity with temperature is normal for most materials (taking insulators and semiconductors together as being a majority), and that's almost a definitive property of a semiconductor. Mainly metals tend to go the other way, so it's not really correct to say zirconia is one of "few compounds" that do this when in fact it's one of a very large number of common compounds with the same property. Zirconia is often considered to be a "wide bandgap" semiconductor (Eg~5-ish eV), and it shares a lot of properties with diamond (Eg~5.5 eV) because their bandgaps are similar. Tarchon 17:51, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

