But Indian tribes insist they must bury the bones now. We face the issue of science vs. repatriation. Four thousand years ago man first melted sand by inadvertently combining it with metal salts. The chemistry of glass is the chemistry of metals and non-metals, their structure and properties. Fiber optics growth in communications is astonishing.
Man has fashioned ceramics from clay since antiquity.
The old becomes new as specialized ceramics become the substrate for metallic catalysts. These compositions become catalytic converters placed in the exhaust flow from internal combustion engines. The ceramic-based catalysts increase the rate of conversion of nitric oxides back to the elements. We protect our environment by removing the NO x pollutants. We study the catalysis and rates of reaction, we look at the the chemical structure of silicon-based crystals and of nitrogen and oxygen.