Definition of glass

DEFINITION OF GLASS

In layman's and professional literature, we can come across a description of the definition of glass expressed in different variations.

The glassy state of matter is an example of a compromise between the properties of a crystal and the properties of liquids. The structure of glass is similar to the structure of the associated liquid, as water, so the definition that glass is supercooled liquids is not so far from the truth. In specialist glass literature, the general definition of glass reads as follows:

Glass is a substance in an amorphous state, which shows transformative transformations during the transition from a solid consistency to a viscous-plastic consistency and vice versa.

GLASS

  Glass is a non-crystalline solid that is often transparent, brittle and chemically inert. It has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics.

  Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of the molten form; some glasses such as volcanic glass are naturally occurring. The most familiar, and historically the oldest, types of manufactured glass are "silicate glasses" based on the chemical compound silica (silicon dioxide, or quartz), the primary constituent of sand. Soda–lime glass, containing around 70% silica, accounts for around 90% of manufactured glass. The term glass, in popular usage, is often used to refer only to this type of material, although silica-free glasses often have desirable properties for applications in modern communications technology. Some objects, such as drinking glasses and eyeglasses, are so commonly made of silicate-based glass that they are simply called by the name of the material.

  Despite being brittle, buried silicate glass will survive for very long periods if not disturbed, and many examples of glass fragments exist from early glassmaking cultures. Archaeological evidence suggests glassmaking dates back to at least 3,600 BC in Mesopotamia, Egypt, or Syria. The earliest known glass objects were beads, perhaps created accidentally during metalworking or the production of faience. Due to its ease of formability into any shape, glass has been traditionally used for vessels, such as bowls, vases, bottles, jars and drinking glasses. In its most solid forms, it has also been used for paperweights and marbles. Glass can be coloured by adding metal salts or painted and printed with vitreous enamels, leading to its use in stained glass windows and other glass art objects. The refractive, reflective and transmission properties of glass make glass suitable for manufacturing optical lenses, prisms, and optoelectronics materials. Extruded glass fibres have application as optical fibres in communications networks, thermal insulating material when matted as glass wool so as to trap air, or in glass-fibre reinforced plastic (fibreglass). 

History

  Naturally occurring obsidian glass was used by Stone Age societies as it fractures along very sharp edges, making it ideal for cutting tools and weapons. Glassmaking dates back at least 6000 years, long before humans had discovered how to smelt iron. Archaeological evidence suggests that the first true synthetic glass was made in Lebanon and the coastal north Syria, Mesopotamia or ancient Egypt. The earliest known glass objects, of the mid-third millennium BC, were beads, perhaps initially created as accidental by-products of metalworking (slags) or during the production of faience, a pre-glass vitreous material made by a process similar to glazing. Early glass was rarely transparent and often contained impurities and imperfections, and is technically faience rather than true glass, which did not appear until the 15th century BC. However, red-orange glass beads excavated from the Indus Valley Civilization dated before 1700 BC (possibly as early as 1900 BC) predate sustained glass production, which appeared around 1600 BC in Mesopotamia and 1500 BC in Egypt. During the Late Bronze Age there was a rapid growth in glassmaking technology in Egypt and Western Asia. Archaeological finds from this period include coloured glass ingots, vessels, and beads. Much early glass production relied on grinding techniques borrowed from stoneworking, such as grinding and carving glass in a cold state.

  The term glass developed in the late Roman Empire. It was in the Roman glassmaking centre at Trier (located in current-day Germany) that the late-Latin term glesum originated, probably from a Germanic word for a transparent, lustrous substance. Glass objects have been recovered across the Roman Empire in domestic, funerary, and industrial contexts, as well as trade items in marketplaces in distant provinces. Examples of Roman glass have been found outside of the former Roman Empire in China, the Baltics, the Middle East, and India. The Romans perfected cameo glass, produced by etching and carving through fused layers of different colours to produce a design in relief on the glass object.
Elaborate stained glass windows in the choir of the Basilica of Saint Denis
Windows in the choir of the Basilica of Saint-Denis, one of the earliest uses of extensive areas of glass (early 13th-century architecture with restored glass of the 19th century)

  In post-classical West Africa, Benin was a manufacturer of glass and glass beads. Glass was used extensively in Europe during the Middle Ages. Anglo-Saxon glass has been found across England during archaeological excavations of both settlement and cemetery sites. From the 10th century onwards, glass was employed in stained glass windows of churches and cathedrals, with famous examples at Chartres Cathedral and the Basilica of Saint-Denis. By the 14th century, architects were designing buildings with walls of stained glass such as Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, (1203–1248) and the East end of Gloucester Cathedral. With the change in architectural style during the Renaissance period in Europe, the use of large stained glass windows became much less prevalent, although stained glass had a major revival with Gothic Revival architecture in the 19th century.

  During the 13th century, the island of Murano, Venice, became a centre for glass making, building on medieval techniques to produce colourful ornamental pieces in large quantities. Murano glass makers developed the exceptionally clear colourless glass cristallo, so called for its resemblance to natural crystal, which was extensively used for windows, mirrors, ships' lanterns, and lenses. In the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, enamelling and gilding on glass vessels was perfected in Egypt and Syria. Towards the end of the 17th century, Bohemia became an important region for glass production, remaining so until the start of the 20th century. By the 17th century, glass in the Venetian tradition was also being produced in England. In about 1675, George Ravenscroft invented lead crystal glass, with cut glass becoming fashionable in the 18th century. Ornamental glass objects became an important art medium during the Art Nouveau period in the late 19th century.

  Throughout the 20th century, new mass production techniques led to widespread availability of glass in much larger amounts, making it practical as a building material and enabling new applications of glass. In the 1920s a mould-etch process was developed, in which art was etched directly into the mould, so that each cast piece emerged from the mould with the image already on the surface of the glass. This reduced manufacturing costs and, combined with a wider use of coloured glass, led to cheap glassware in the 1930s, which later became known as Depression glass.

In the 1950s, Pilkington Bros., England, developed the float glass process, producing high-quality distortion-free flat sheets of glass by floating on molten tin. Modern multi-story buildings are frequently constructed with curtain walls made almost entirely of glass. Laminated glass has been widely applied to vehicles for windscreens. Optical glass for spectacles has been used since the Middle Ages. The production of lenses has become increasingly proficient, aiding astronomers as well as having other application in medicine and science. Glass is also employed as the aperture cover in many solar energy collectors.

  In the 21st century, glass manufacturers have developed different brands of chemically strengthened glass for widespread application in touchscreens for smartphones, tablet computers, and many other types of information appliances. These include Gorilla Glass, developed and manufactured by Corning, AGC Inc.'s Dragontrail and Schott AG's Xensation.

Silica glass

 Clear silica glass is a transparent or translucent, hard, relatively strong, wear-resistant, chemically essentially inert and biologically inactive material. It can be shaped, sanded, colored and decorated almost as desired. These desired properties predestinate them for a large number of uses in many fields of human activity. Glass is very fragile and breaks into sharp shards, but this can be changed by adding other substances or heat treatment.

  It is made from viscous enamel melted in a glass furnace. The material cools quickly so it does not have enough time to form a regular crystal lattice, similar to when table sugar is melted and quickly cooled by pouring it onto a cold surface. The resulting solid is amorphous, with a conchoidal structure, not crystalline, as the sugar was before melting.

  Glass mainly contains silicon dioxide, which is contained in the quartz or silica sand (also glass sand) from which it is produced. Quartz has a melting point of around 2000°C, so alkaline substances such as soda ash and potash are added during production to lower the melting point to around 1000°C. Since alkalis reduce the water resistance of the glass, which is usually undesirable, calcium oxide is also added to improve this resistance.

  When measuring on medieval stained-glass windows, the individual panes were often thicker at the bottom edge, and this led to the false assumption that the glass is a solution or that it behaves like a liquid over a long period of time. Differences in the thickness of these glasses probably arose already during production, because cases were also found where the glass is thicker at the top, and ancient glass products and old optical instruments do not show any such deformation.

The composition of silica glass

  The most important types of silica glass in terms of composition are:

Silicate

  Quartz sand (silica) is the main raw material in commercial glass production

  Silicon dioxide (SiO2) is a common fundamental constituent of glass. Fused quartz is a glass made from chemically pure silica. It has very low thermal expansion and excellent resistance to thermal shock, being able to survive immersion in water while red hot, resists high temperatures (1000–1500 °C) and chemical weathering, and is very hard. It is also transparent to a wider spectral range than ordinary glass, extending from the visible further into both the UV and IR ranges, and is sometimes used where transparency to these wavelengths is necessary. Fused quartz is used for high-temperature applications such as furnace tubes, lighting tubes, melting crucibles, etc. However, its high melting temperature (1723 °C) and viscosity make it difficult to work with. Therefore, normally, other substances (fluxes) are added to lower the melting temperature and simplify glass processing.

Soda–lime

  Sodium carbonate (Na2CO3, "soda") is a common additive and acts to lower the glass-transition temperature. However, sodium silicate is water-soluble, so lime (CaO, calcium oxide, generally obtained from limestone), along with magnesium oxide (MgO), and aluminium oxide (Al2O3), are commonly added to improve chemical durability. Soda–lime glasses (Na2O) + lime (CaO) + magnesia (MgO) + alumina (Al2O3) account for over 75% of manufactured glass, containing about 70 to 74% silica by weight. Soda–lime–silicate glass is transparent, easily formed, and most suitable for window glass and tableware. However, it has a high thermal expansion and poor resistance to heat. Soda–lime glass is typically used for windows, bottles, light bulbs, and jars.

Borosilicate

  Borosilicate glasses (e.g. Pyrex, Duran) typically contain 5–13% boron trioxide (B2O3). Borosilicate glasses have fairly low coefficients of thermal expansion (7740 Pyrex CTE is 3.25×10−6/°C as compared to about 9×10−6/°C for a typical soda–lime glass). They are, therefore, less subject to stress caused by thermal expansion and thus less vulnerable to cracking from thermal shock. They are commonly used for e.g. labware, household cookware, and sealed beam car head lamps.

Lead

  The addition of lead(II) oxide into silicate glass lowers melting point and viscosity of the melt. The high density of lead glass (silica + lead oxide (PbO) + potassium oxide (K2O) + soda (Na2O) + zinc oxide (ZnO) + alumina) results in a high electron density, and hence high refractive index, making the look of glassware more brilliant and causing noticeably more specular reflection and increased optical dispersion. Lead glass has a high elasticity, making the glassware more workable and giving rise to a clear "ring" sound when struck. However, lead glass cannot withstand high temperatures well. Lead oxide also facilitates solubility of other metal oxides and is used in coloured glass. The viscosity decrease of lead glass melt is very significant (roughly 100 times in comparison with soda glass); this allows easier removal of bubbles and working at lower temperatures, hence its frequent use as an additive in vitreous enamels and glass solders. The high ionic radius of the Pb2+ ion renders it highly immobile and hinders the movement of other ions; lead glasses therefore have high electrical resistance, about two orders of magnitude higher than soda–lime glass (108.5 vs 106.5 Ω⋅cm, DC at 250 °C).

Aluminosilicate

  Aluminosilicate glass typically contains 5–10% alumina (Al2O3). Aluminosilicate glass tends to be more difficult to melt and shape compared to borosilicate compositions, but has excellent thermal resistance and durability. Aluminosilicate glass is extensively used for fiberglass, used for making glass-reinforced plastics (boats, fishing rods, etc.), top-of-stove cookware, and halogen bulb glass.

Packaging glass

    Packaging glass is similar in composition, but contains more calcium and aluminum to increase chemical resistance, and is often tinted brown or green to filter out any UV rays.It is used for ordinary bottles and glasses, and glass crumb from recycled glass is added during production, which significantly saves energy.

Glass according to use

  Flat glass is used for glazing windows, greenhouses, doors and furniture, for cladding buildings, framing pictures and making mirrors. It used to have to be sanded, whereas floating technology no longer requires any sanding. Glass for windows and cladding is often provided with a surface layer that, for example, absorbs infrared rays (dethermal glass).

  Packaging glass is used for the production of bottles, glasses and glassware, packaging for cosmetics and medicines. Technical glass includes glass products and components for the chemical and food industry, including pipes, for electrical engineering (insulators), vacuum technology and many other industries.

  Optical glass is a very clear glass with different compositions but precisely defined optical properties. According to the refractive index, a distinction is made between flint glass with a high and crown glass with a low refractive index.

  Auto glass is usually layered (laminated) glass, which does not spill out or form large shards upon impact. Auto glass is also heat-treated (tempered glass, breaks into small pieces under internal stress upon impact) and is often provided with a surface layer.

  Bulletproof glass is a multilayer sandwich of glass and plastics that dampens the energy of a bullet.

  Art glass is made by hand using very diverse techniques of blowing, bending, casting, grinding and surface treatments - etching, engraving and painting.

  Building glass includes both flat glass for windows and cladding, as well as building materials such as wire glass, luxfera, insulating foam glass, glass wool and others.