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glass, an inorganic solid cloth that is usually transparent or translucent as well every bit hard, breakable, and impervious to the natural elements. Drinking glass has been fabricated into practical and decorative objects since ancient times, and it is still very important in applications every bit disparate as building structure, housewares, and telecommunication. It is fabricated past cooling molten ingredients such as silica sand with sufficient rapidity to forbid the formation of visible crystals.

A brief treatment of glass follows. Glass is treated in detail in a number of articles. Stained glass and the artful aspects of glass design are described in stained glass and glassware. The composition, properties, and industrial production of glass are covered in industrial glass. The concrete and atomic characteristics of glass are treated in amorphous solid.

The varieties of glass differ widely in chemical composition and in physical qualities. Most varieties, withal, take certain qualities in common. They pass through a gluey stage in cooling from a state of fluidity; they develop effects of colour when the drinking glass mixtures are fused with certain metal oxides; they are, when cold, poor conductors both of electricity and of heat; most types are hands fractured by a blow or stupor and testify a conchoidal fracture; and they are but slightly affected by ordinary solvents just are readily attacked by hydrofluoric acrid.

drinking glass; Prince Rupert'southward Drop

The Prince Rupert's Drop is a droplet of glass formed past the rapid cooling of molten glass in cold water. A novelty in the 1600s, the aerosol are used today to demonstrate the strength of tempered drinking glass. The prototype hither, produced with the use of polarized lenses, shows stress and potential energy stored in the glass as a rainbow.

© Tyler A. Gordon

Commercial glass composition

Commercial glasses may be divided into soda–lime–silica glasses and special spectacles, most of the tonnage produced beingness of the one-time grade. Such spectacles are made from iii main materials—sand (silicon dioxide, or SiO₂), limestone (calcium carbonate, or CaCO₃), and sodium carbonate (Na₂CO_three). Fused silica itself is an excellent glass, but, as the melting point of sand (crystalline silica) is above i,700 °C (3,092 °F) and as information technology is very expensive to attain such loftier temperatures, its uses are restricted to those in which its superior properties—chemical inertness and the ability to withstand sudden changes of temperature—are so important that the toll is justified. Withal, the production of fused silica glass is quite a large industry; information technology is manufactured in various qualities, and, when intended for optical purposes, the raw material used is rock crystal rather than quartz sand.

To reduce the melting point of silica, information technology is necessary to add together a flux; this is the purpose of the sodium carbonate (soda ash), which makes available the fluxing agent sodium oxide. By adding almost 25 percent of the sodium oxide to silica, the melting point is reduced from 1,723 to 850 °C (3,133 to 1,562 °F). But such glasses are easily soluble in water (their solutions are called water drinking glass). The addition of lime (calcium oxide, or CaO), supplied by the limestone, renders the glass insoluble again, but too much makes a glass decumbent to devitrification—i.e., the precipitation of crystalline phases in sure ranges of temperature. The optimum composition is nearly 75 pct silica, x percentage lime, and xv percent soda, but fifty-fifty this is as well liable to devitrification during certain mechanical forming operations to be satisfactory.

In making canvass glass it is customary to apply six pct of lime and four percent of magnesia (magnesium oxide, or MgO), and in canteen glass well-nigh 2 percent alumina (aluminum oxide, or Al₂O₃) is often nowadays. Other materials are besides added, some beingness put in to assist in refining the drinking glass (i.e., to remove the bubbling left behind in the melting process), while others are added to improve its colour. For example, sand ever contains atomic number 26 every bit an impurity, and, although the material used for making bottles is specially selected for its low iron content, the small traces of impurity still impart an undesirable green colour to the container; by the use of selenium and cobalt oxide together with traces of arsenic trioxide and sodium nitrate, it is possible to neutralize the light-green colour and produce a and so-called white (decolourized) drinking glass.

Optical and high-temperature drinking glass

Glasses of very different, and often much more expensive, compositions are made when special concrete and chemic properties are necessary. For instance, in optical spectacles, a wide range of compositions is required to obtain the variety of refractive index and dispersion needed if the lens designer is to produce multicomponent lenses that are free from the various faults associated with a unmarried lens, such every bit chromatic aberration. Loftier-purity, ultratransparent oxide glasses have been adult for use in fibre-optic telecommunication systems, in which messages are transmitted equally light pulses over drinking glass fibres.

When ordinary glass is subjected to a sudden change of temperature, stresses are produced in it that render it liable to fracture; past reducing its coefficient of thermal expansion, however, it is possible to make it much less susceptible to thermal shock. The glass with the lowest expansion coefficient is fused silica. Some other well-known example is the borosilicate glass used for making domestic cookware, which has an expansion coefficient just one-3rd that of the typical soda–lime–silica glass. In gild to event this reduction, much of the sodium oxide added as a flux is replaced by boric oxide (B_iiO_iii) and some of the lime past alumina. Another familiar special glass is the atomic number 82 crystal glass used in the industry of superior tableware; by using atomic number 82 monoxide (PbO) every bit a flux, information technology is possible to obtain a drinking glass with a high refractive index and, consequently, the desired sparkle and brilliance.

Calculation colour and special properties

The agents used to colour drinking glass are generally metal oxides. The same oxide may produce unlike colours with different drinking glass mixtures, and different oxides of the same metal may produce different colours. The royal-blueish of cobalt, the chrome light-green or yellow of chromium, the dichroic canary color of uranium, and the violet of manganese are constant. Ferrous oxide produces an olive light-green or a pale blue according to the drinking glass with which it is mixed. Ferric oxide gives a yellow color just requires an oxidizing agent to prevent reduction to the ferrous state. Lead gives a stake yellow colour. Silvery oxide gives a permanent yellow stain. Finely divided vegetable charcoal added to a soda–lime glass gives a yellow colour. Selenites and selenates requite a stake pink or pinkish yellow. Tellurium appears to requite a pale pink tint. Nickel with a potash–lead glass gives a violet colour, and a brown colour with a soda–lime drinking glass. Copper gives a peacock blue, which becomes green if the proportion of the copper oxide is increased.

glass goblet

Wine goblet, blue glass decorated with white and gilded enamel, Iran, mid-19th century; in the Brooklyn Museum, New York.

Photograph by Trish Mayo. Brooklyn Museum, New York, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles Chiliad. Wilkinson in honor of Irma L. Fraad, 76.147.3

An important form of materials is the chalcogenide glasses, which are selenides, containing thallium, arsenic, tellurium, and antimony in various proportions. They deport as baggy semiconductors. Their photoconductive properties are too valuable.

Certain metal glasses have magnetic backdrop; their characteristics of ease of industry, magnetic softness, and high electrical resistivity brand them useful in the magnetic cores of electrical ability transformers.

Glassmaking over the centuries

Many different useful and decorative articles have been made from glass over the centuries. The history of glass as a creative art has been determined partly by technical advances in its manufacture and decoration and partly by the history of taste and fashion.

glassblowing

Molten drinking glass on a glassblowing rod.

© Royik Yevgen/Shutterstock.com

Glass was offset made in the ancient world, but its earliest origins are obscure. Egyptian glass beads are the primeval glass objects known, dating from about 2500 bce. Later in Egyptian civilization, a type of glass characterized by feathery or zigzag patterns of coloured threads on the surface of the glass vessel was made.

The existent origins of modern glass were in Alexandria during the Ptolemaic menstruation and, later, in aboriginal Rome. Alexandrian craftsmen perfected a technique known as mosaic drinking glass in which slices of glass canes of different colours were cut crossways to make dissimilar decorative patterns. Millefiori glass, for which the canes are cut in such a way equally to produce designs reminiscent of flower shapes, is a blazon of mosaic drinking glass.

drinking glass bowl

Basin of pressed mosaic glass, believed to be from Alexandria, Arab republic of egypt, 1st century bce; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum

Molded glass was besides developed early, glass beingness pressed into a mold to form a particular shape. Various types of decoration involving engraving and color were also possible.

Glassblowing was probably developed during the 1st century bce past glassmakers in Syrian arab republic. With this technique the possibilities of shaping glass into desired forms were endless. Glass could be diddled into a mold or shaped completely free-form. The Romans perfected cameo glass, in which the design has been produced by cutting abroad a layer of glass to leave the design in relief.

Portland Vase

Portland Vase, Roman cameo glass, 1st century ce; in the British Museum.

Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum

The next major developments in the history of glass came during the 15th century in Venice. Equally early as the 13th century the Venetian island of Murano had get the heart for glassmaking. At first, Venetian glassmakers made use of many of the aboriginal and medieval decorative techniques to produce richly coloured and ornamental pieces having motifs characteristic of the Italian Renaissance.

Murano: glassblowing

An artisan blowing glass on Murano island, near Venice.

© Bojan Brecelj—The Paradigm Banking concern Unreleased/Getty Images

After they developed a articulate glass similar to crystal, called cristallo, which was to grade the basis for a thriving consign trade and spread throughout Europe. Simple blown glasses of this type were much in demand in the 16th century. Such drinking glass lent itself to decoration by the engraving of delicate designs; used from the early 16th century, the technique remained popular well into the 18th century throughout Europe. Diamond-point engraving was practiced in particular in the Netherlands and in Deutschland.

Late in the 17th century Bohemia became an important glass-producing area, and information technology remained of import until early in the 20th century. By the 17th century England was making glass in the Venetian tradition that was notable for its simplicity. The glassmaker George Ravenscroft discovered most 1675 that the improver of lead oxide to Venetian-type glass produced a solid, heavier glass. Lead crystal, equally it was known, thereafter became a favourite blazon of glass for fine tableware.

Ravenscroft, George: drinking glass mug

Glass mug by George Ravenscroft, c. 1674–80; in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Enameling came into fashion in the middle of the 18th century in England, leading to the development of the type of glass sometimes called Bristol drinking glass. In the 18th century glass cutting came into fashion. As this technique was perfected, groovy richness of effect became possible. Eventually, by the end of the 18th century, when the technique was further developed in Ireland, the whole surface of glass was being deeply cut to reverberate calorie-free. This English and Irish gaelic cut lead crystal was imitated in Europe and in the United states of america and has remained popular to the present day. Waterford crystal is an important example of this type.

The Art Nouveau period saw some important changes. The Favrile glass invented by Louis Comfort Tiffany, with its flowing shapes derived from naturalistic forms and its lustrous surface, was much admired and particularly influenced glassmakers in fundamental Europe. The French glassmaker Émile Gallé and the firm of Daum Frères were likewise important designers in the Fine art Nouveau epoch.

René Lalique, one of the leaders of French glass fine art, fabricated drinking glass characterized by relief decoration. The Steuben Drinking glass Company of New York produced clear glass objects, frequently with engraved or incised designs.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica This article was most recently revised and updated past Adam Augustyn.

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Source: https://www.britannica.com/technology/glass

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