The purpose of this design is to replace the current valve arrangement on today's internal combustion engines with one that is much more efficient. Current designs employ a rocker arm, spring, and valve-stem to create the up-and-down motion of the intake and exhaust valves, and as a result, there is a great deal of "hammering" of the valves on the cylinder head. The new design is called the "ball" valve, and it employs a rolling motion to perform the tasks of intake and exhaust. In doing so, the ball eliminates the hammering as it moves in a smoother and more natural fashion, and significantly less work is required to deploy it. But the main reason for switching to the ball valve lies in the fact that it will enable ceramic liners to be added to the inside surfaces of the combustion chamber. Hammering would shatter ceramic inserts, and the ball valve has no hammering. The result would be a successful ceramic-lined engine that would be enormously more efficient than current designs. A ceramic engine would run much hotter, and yet it would require little or no cooling. The increased efficiency would, therefore, be very large, on the order of 30% greater, and it could produce almost revolutionary changes in vehicle design. A piston driven aircraft that employs air cooling has 50% of its total drag as cooling drag, so again, the impact of using a ceramic engine would be huge. This design is entered in the "Transportation" category, but it could just as easily apply to the "Machinery, Equipment & Component" category or even the "Sustainable Technologies" area due to the green effects of the increased fuel efficiency. With the energy crisis we all face today, a ceramic engine would be an enormous "shot in the arm", and the only way to get a successful one is with the ceramic-lined ball valve.