Glass

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Glass 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.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.


News tagged with glass

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Tiny whispering gallery

Tiny whispering gallery: Sensor can detect a single nanoparticle and take its measurement

Physics / Optics & Photonics

created Dec 18, 2009 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (16) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Nanotechnology has already made it to the shelves of your local pharmacy and grocery: nanoparticles are found in anti-odor socks, makeup, makeup remover, sunscreen, anti-graffiti paint, home ...


Bioactive glass nanofibers produced

Bioactive glass nanofibers produced

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Dec 18, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (6) | comments 0

A team of researchers from the University of Vigo, Rutgers University in the United States and Imperial College London, in the United Kingdom, has developed "laser spinning", a novel method of producing glass ...


MO-SCI to manufacture SRNL's unique porous walled hollow glass microspheres

Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials

created Dec 17, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

A licensing agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) and specialty glass provider Mo-Sci Corporation will make SRNL's unique Porous Walled Hollow Glass Microspheres available ...


Rare earth metal enhances phosphate glass

Physics / Condensed Matter

created Dec 15, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Adding cerium oxide to phosphate glass rather than the commonly used silicate glass may make glasses that block ultraviolet light and have increased radiation damage resistance while remaining colorless, ...


Parents: Be mindful of hazardous holiday ornaments

Parents: Be mindful of hazardous holiday ornaments

Medicine & Health / Health

created Dec 14, 2009 | popularity not rated yet | comments 0

A new study from Children's Hospital Boston's Division of Emergency Medicine has found that holiday decorations, particularly glass ornaments, are one more safety hazard parents must consider during the season. ...


Nature's fine designs: Scientists find modern lessons in ancient creations

Nature's fine designs: Scientists find modern lessons in ancient creations

Biology / Other

created Dec 04, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (4) | comments 0

(PhysOrg.com) -- Nature and its bottom-up processes for creating robust and responsive materials are inspiring new generations of synthetic materials and creative design.


Lymnaea stagnalis

Right/left handedness of snails changed in the lab

Biology / Plants & Animals

created Nov 30, 2009 | popularity 4.7 / 5 (6) | comments 2

(PhysOrg.com) -- Like most animals, snails have either left- or right-handed asymmetry (chirality), both internally and externally, and the handedness is hereditary. A new study has for the first time found ...


Sponges against cancer

Biology / Cell & Microbiology

created Nov 20, 2009 | popularity 4.5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

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

Novel connector uses magnets for leak-free microfluidic devices

Physics / General Physics

created Nov 18, 2009 | popularity 4.8 / 5 (4) | comments 0

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

Spotting evidence of directed percolation

Physics / General Physics

created Nov 17, 2009 | popularity 3.5 / 5 (2) | comments 0

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

Exploration by explosion: Studying the inner realm of living cells

Chemistry / Biochemistry

created Nov 11, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (5) | comments 0

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 ...


Atlanta's Fernbank Museum tracks infamous conquistador through southeast

Team tracks infamous conquistador through southeast

Other Sciences / Archaeology & Fossils

created Nov 05, 2009 | popularity 3.3 / 5 (3) | comments 0

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

Materials scientists find better model for glass creation

Physics / Condensed Matter

created Nov 04, 2009 | popularity 3.6 / 5 (7) | comments 0

(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

Medicine & Health / Health

created Nov 03, 2009 | popularity 4 / 5 (1) | comments 1

(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 Glasses

3D TV -- Without the Glasses (w/ Video)

Technology / Hi Tech

created Oct 29, 2009 | popularity 3.8 / 5 (12) | comments 11

(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 ...