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.
This text uses material from Wikipedia and is available under the GNU Free Documentation License.
News tagged with glass
Parents: Be mindful of hazardous holiday ornaments
6 hours ago |
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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. ...
Right/left handedness of snails changed in the lab
Nov 30, 2009 |
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(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 ...
Nature's fine designs: Scientists find modern lessons in ancient creations
Dec 04, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Nature and its bottom-up processes for creating robust and responsive materials are inspiring new generations of synthetic materials and creative design.
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 ...
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 ...
Carbon Nanotubes Toughen a Common Plastic
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Apr 07, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- A research group from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel has discovered that adding carbon nanotubes to a widely used commercial plastic can greatly strengthen it. Their work is one ...
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, ...
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.
Glass you can build with: Metallic glass that's stronger and lasts longer
Mar 24, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- The normal structure of metals is crystalline. Glass, on the other hand, is amorphous. But it's possible to make amorphous forms of metal, metallic glasses, which can be remarkably strong, ...
Storing a Lightning Bolt in Glass for Portable Power
May 05, 2009 |
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(PhysOrg.com) -- Materials researchers at Penn State University have reported the highest known breakdown strength for a bulk glass ever measured. Breakdown strength, along with dielectric constant, determines ...
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 ...
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.
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.
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 ...
Ancient diatoms lead to new technology for solar energy
Nanotechnology / Nanomaterials
Apr 08, 2009 |
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Engineers at Oregon State University have discovered a way to use an ancient life form to create one of the newest technologies for solar energy, in systems that may be surprisingly simple to build compared to existing silicon-based ...
