Best coatings, ceramics & glass books according to redditors

Molecular structure gets changed in glaze firing, called vitrification. Bisque firing burns out organic matter and clay undergoes quartz inversion: bisque isn't needed, but is very convenient for glazing and is less fragile than bone dry greenware.

There are many many different types of firings and clay composition. I will try to refer you to some literature tomorrow if I remember.

some really fantastic resources:

http://www.amazon.com/Potters-Book-Bernard-Leach/dp/057110973X
http://www.amazon.com/Clay-Glazes-Potter-Daniel-Rhodes/dp/0873418638
http://www.amazon.com/Ceramic-Science-Potter-W-Lawrence/dp/0801971551

Rhode's book is the one I had in college; very comprehensive and informative.
Leach's book covers a lifetime of observations from perhaps the most influential potter of the Western world
Lawrence's book starts to get into the really interesting side of technical ceramics: exploring topics of firing chemistry and chemical tailoring.

This is an interesting problem. To make any sense of this we would need to consider the chemical content of the food, particularly it's acidity, as well as the temperature you are cooking at. Iron as a metal will be prone to corrode into solution with a acidity particularly. I suspect for example, that simmering tomato sauce in an iron pan at high heat for an extended period of time would yield a particularly iron-rich solution. I'm interested in working out the kinetics of this and I'll report back when I have more information.

http://www.amazon.ca/Principles-Corrosion-Engineering-Control/dp/0750659246/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1331455651&sr=8-4

Sorry, just saw your reply this morning. These glasses are well understood. Check out USP type I and type III glasses. Read up on any resource online of glass types and additives.

If you're looking for specifically fatigue resistance of various glasses then that does exist. A quick google gave me this paper. More importantly though, glass like most materials is standardised. Corning (who invented pyrex) give a list of their glasses here. ASTM & USP codify lots of glass types with their mechanical properties. And of course there are several books on the topic of glass properties. This and This are great glass resources. And if you really want to go down the rabbit hole you could look into this sort of thing.

Most importantly though is to understand what we're talking about. Boron oxide is essentially a flux for glass. While arc international obviously believe it's not required in cooking applications, that doesn't mean that it doesn't improve glass performace in high/low temps, and there's absolutely no reason why it should significantly effect something like fatigue or fracture performance. From my perspective, it's similar to adding a bit of chromium to steel to improve corrosion performance, or putting a little citric acid in concrete to slow down the set. These are common tactics employed by engineers to get the performance they are looking for from a material.

>Forgive me for not assuming /r/cooking is made up entirely of mechanical engineers

That's alright, you're forgiven. I am one though if that helps at all. :)

I get this a lot too. My introductory ceramics class(note: Not pottery making) made me end up with this book: http://www.amazon.com/Magic-Ceramics-David-W-Richerson/dp/1574980505 which we were told to give to our parents just so they wouldn't ask us what the hell we did for the rest of our lives =P