Dr Colin Freeman, a senior lecturer in materials simulation and avid snooker fan, was interested in how new snooker chalks developed over the last 5-10 years have helped eliminate kicks from the game. In snooker, a kick refers to an undesirable and unpredictable contact between the cue ball and the object ball which can result in poor shots and missed pots.
The chalk creates necessary friction between the cue tip and the cue ball helping reduce the risk of miscues - when the cue tip slips off the ball. It can help maintain consistency between shots and the extra friction is also helpful with enabling spin.
All undergraduate students studying Materials Science and Engineering do a research project in their third year. Colin proposed a project to look at how the composition of new chalks have eliminated kicks.
Jasper who undertook Colin’s project said: “I was really interested to understand the performance characteristics of different brands of chalk and how they compared to each other. To achieve this, I conducted a series of tests, including Energy-Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDX), hardness testing, and Fourier-Transform Infrared Radiation Spectroscopy (FTIR).
The opportunity to use such advanced analytical equipment was invaluable. Experiencing firsthand the tools and techniques employed in industrial settings provided a tangible insight into potential career paths following graduation. This project really enhanced my understanding of material science and its practical applications.”
This project yielded interesting findings regarding the composition and properties of snooker chalk. Firstly we might assume that snooker chalk is made from calcium carbonate chalk, the same materials we see in the White Cliffs of Dover. Traditional snooker chalk is composed of quartz, also known as silicon dioxide, which is the base material of sand and glass. Newer chalk formulations frequently incorporate corundum, or aluminium oxide, the mineral responsible for sapphires and rubies and valued for its hardness.
The analysis of various snooker chalk types revealed that a mixture of quartz and corundum results in a material with significantly improved resistance to brittleness compared to pure quartz.
A crucial factor in achieving this enhanced strength is the controlled process of mixing these materials. Too much mixing diminishes the chalk's ability to fragment, which is essential for providing effective lubrication to the snooker cue tip while too little will leave a material that is too brittle.
This project highlights the principle that precise manipulation of material processing can lead to substantial alterations in a material's characteristics. Think about it like baking a cake, where variations in temperature and duration can produce considerably different outcomes. In this instance, a slightly less complete mixing process produces a snooker chalk with a more desirable balance of durability and functional fragmentation.
Colin is hoping to run another student project in the future, “I would love to experiment some more and see if we could make some of our own snooker chalk. It would be fun to see how much variation we can get in the properties of the chalk. The applications of this could be really interesting to groups who are making these kinds of ceramic materials for commercial use to understand the range they can work in.”
