A method for manufacturing an engineered stone, the method including: providing a mixture comprising at least a stone or stone like material and a binder; compacting the mixture; curing the binder; and further comprising printing a printed pattern on at least a top surface of the engineered stone.

A syntactic foam is comprised of a matrix, a quantity of porous polymer beads in the matrix, each of which is smaller than 1.5 mm in width, and a quantity of hollow microspheres distributed within the matrix amongst the quantity of porous polymer beads. The largest of the hollow microspheres is at least 7 times smaller than the smallest of the porous polymer beads, and the hollow microspheres have a size distribution of 10 m.