Glass
hideGlass generally refers to hard, brittle, transparent material, such as those used for windows, many bottles, or eyewear. Examples of such solid materials include, but are not limited to, soda-lime glass, borosilicate glass, acrylic glass, sugar glass, isinglass (Muscovy-glass), or aluminium oxynitride. In the technical sense, glass is an inorganic product of fusion which has been cooled through the glass transition to a rigid condition without crystallizing. Many glasses contain silica as their main component and glass former.
In the scientific sense the term glass is often extended to all amorphous solids (and melts that easily form amorphous solids), including plastics, resins, or other silica-free amorphous solids. In addition, besides traditional melting techniques, any other means of preparation are considered, such as ion implantation, and the sol-gel method. However, glass science and physics commonly includes only inorganic amorphous solids, while plastics and similar organics are covered by polymer science, biology and further scientific disciplines.
Glass plays an essential role in science and industry. The optical and physical properties of glass make it suitable for applications such as flat glass, container glass, optics and optoelectronics material, laboratory equipment, thermal insulator (glass wool), reinforcement fiber (glass-reinforced plastic, glass fiber reinforced concrete), and art.
The term glass developed in the late Roman Empire. It was in the Roman glassmaking center at Trier, Germany, that the late-Latin term glesum originated, probably from a Germanic word for a transparent, lustrous substance.
For more information about Glass, read the full article at
Wikipedia.
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News tagged with glass
Sponges against cancer
Nov 20, 2009 |
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Deep under the sea, there's a battle of life and death going on, with no holds barred. Sponges and other marine animals which cannot move around might seem to be defenceless against predators. Yet nothing is further from ...
Novel connector uses magnets for leak-free microfluidic devices
Nov 18, 2009 |
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Like other users of microfluidic systems, National Institute of Standards and Technology researcher Javier Atencia was faced with an annoying engineering problem: how to simply, reliably and most of all, tightly, ...
Spotting evidence of directed percolation
Nov 17, 2009 |
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A team of physicists has, for the first time, seen convincing experimental evidence for directed percolation, a phenomenon that turns up in computer models of the ways diseases spread through a population ...
Exploration by explosion: Studying the inner realm of living cells
Nov 11, 2009 |
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Scientists in Washington, DC, are reporting development and successful tests of a new way for exploring the insides of living cells, the microscopic building blocks of all known plants and animals. They explode ...
Team tracks infamous conquistador through southeast
Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils
Nov 05, 2009 |
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Archaeologists at Atlanta's Fernbank Museum of Natural History have discovered unprecedented evidence that helps map Hernando de Soto's journey through the Southeast in 1540. No evidence of De Soto's path ...
Materials scientists find better model for glass creation
Nov 04, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Harvard materials scientists have come up with what they believe is a new way to model the formation of glasses, a type of amorphous solid that includes common window glass.
Glass Thermometers Still a Safety Hazard
Nov 03, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A study by emergency physicians at Children's Hospital Boston provides a wakeup call to parents to get rid of their old glass thermometers. A 12year review of patients seen in Children's emergency department ...
3D TV -- Without the Glasses (w/ Video)
Oct 29, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Even with "active shutter" 3D technology for television sets, the wearing of special glasses is still required in order to get the proper experience. They aren't those red and blue or red and ...
New Japanese glasses bring tears to the eyes
Electronics / Consumer & Gadgets
Oct 27, 2009 |
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The Japanese eyewear company behind Sarah Palin's designer glasses has come up with a high-tech solution for obsessive video-gamers and bookworms whose eyes dry out from lack of blinking.
University lab demonstrates 3-D printing in glass
Sep 24, 2009 |
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A team of engineers and artists working at the University of Washington's Solheim Rapid Manufacturing Laboratory has developed a way to create glass objects using a conventional 3-D printer. The technique ...
Physicists Find a World of Motion In the Mystery of Aging Glass
Sep 19, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Physicists super-cooled a liquid into glass in order to observe the slowing of particles. It's a material that still perplexes researchers despite thousands of years of household and industrial use.
MU engineers develop safer, blast-resistant glass (w/ Video)
Sep 10, 2009 |
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To protect from potential terrorist attacks, federal buildings and other critical infrastructures are made with special windows that contain blast-resistant glass. However, the glass is thick and expensive. Currently, University ...
Light at the speed of a bicycle and much more
Sep 09, 2009 |
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The speed of light, 300 million metres per second, was long thought an immutable constant and has defined our understanding of matter and energy but recent research in the area of optics and photonics is proving ...
Logitech Unveils Mice That Work Where Others Fail -- Glass Surface (w/ Video)
Electronics / Consumer & Gadgets
Aug 19, 2009 |
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Today, Logitech took the computer mouse where no mouse has gone before. With Logitech Darkfield Laser Tracking, you can use your mouse virtually anywhere you want - including clear glass (that's at least 4 mm thick) and high-gloss ...
Physicists develop multifunctional storage device for light
Jul 29, 2009 |
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Light is intangible and, in addition, it travels at great velocity. Nevertheless, it can be confined to a very small space by controllably inserting light into a microscopic container surrounded by reflective ...
