Have you ever dropped a glass mug before? Well I have, many a times. But when you do break a mug or a glass have you ever looked at the edges? I did once and it made me wonder how they made glasses and things made of glass. So I decided to research this and clue myself in on the how.
Glass is made up of sand, soda ash, lime stone, and many other minerals compacted together at very high temperatures in order to form a material that is suitable for many uses. The glass is formed when it's in the mouth of the "volcano" and reaches a certain temperature. When this temperature is reached the sand melts and forms obsidian. At the beginning of glass making, the glass was used for the tips of swords. Now man has mastered the art of making glass products so much that we now have things like vases, laptops, I pads, phones, TVs, and much more. When in the process of making glass, the glass is more like a liquid. But when it reaches room temperature it is so dangerous and sticky that it looks and feels almost like a solid. When it's being heated by high temperatures it gets softer and softer. This happens so much that it's almost like a latter property. This is what allows glass to be molded, pressed, and poured into all the different shapes and sizes of things we have today.
The end result depends mostly on the composition, things used in the heating process, and the rate at which the glass-maker lets the glass cool. You can make many, many different types of glass with many different chemical and physical properties. This just depends on the needed adjustments done to the chemical compositions.
One of the things I love about glass is the fact that it is a 100% recyclable. Glass can also be recycled an infinite number of times. And the best part it never loses quality, strength and/or functionality or degrades in any of these areas. I hope this blog was as educational for everybody else like it was me.
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