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One of the most unusual yet compelling gifts of nature that has revolutionized into a convenient

material for everyday use is glass. We drink from it. We eat from it. We build with it. Cinderella
wore it. And Snow White’s evil stepmother’s mirror is made from it. It keeps the weather out
and lets the sunshine in. Cars, trains, boats and planes have it. Likewise, it has become a critical
component in satellites, computers and televisions. It has saved lives and continuously provides
protection from radiation, fire and even bullets. It has emerged to be the modern day wonder
material and the need for it has never been greater.

History
 Before man learned how to create glass, it has existed in the natural world in different
forms.
 Fulgurite is a type of glass formed when lightning strikes sand, the heat vitrify sand
into long, slender glass tubes. It is also known as petrified lightning.
 The terrific heat of a volcanic eruption sometimes fuses rocks and sand into a glass
called obsidian.
 Meteorites hitting the earth results with green natural glass known as moldavite.
 As in the case of several commonplace material part of the modern civilization, the
exact date and location of the discovery of glass is uncertain.
 According to the ancient-Roman historian Pliny, Phoenician merchants transporting
stone actually discovered glass while cooking a meal in a vessel placed by accident
on a block of trona. With the intense heat of the fire, the block eventually melted and
mixed with the sand of the beach forming an opaque liquid later known as glass.
 Soon, merchants learned that wines, honey, and oils could be carried and preserved
far better in glass than in wood or clay containers.
 Early glassmaking was slow, costly and labor-extensive that only wealthy
customers—the priests and the ruling class—could afford to buy glass objects
considered to be valuable.
 The blowpipe was invented by 30 B.C., making glass production easier, faster, and
cheaper. As a result, glass became available to the common people for the first
time. By the time of the Crusades (A.D. 1096-1270), glass manufacture had
developed in Venice enjoying a monopoly as the center of the glass industry.
 In 1674, an English glassmaker named George Ravenscroft patented a new type of
glass in which he had changed the usual ingredients causing English glassmaking to
prosper. This glass is called lead glass, contains a large amount of lead oxide which is
especially suitable for optical instruments.
 After 1890, the development, manufacture, and use of glass increased rapidly. New
methods of cutting, welding, sealing, and tempering, as well as better glass at lower
cost, have led to new uses of glass.
 During 1914, the Fourcault process for drawing a sheet of glass continuously was
developed in Belgium.
 During the next 50 years, there were modifications of the flat-sheet drawing process
introducing the float glass technique. This method has eliminated all plate glass
produced by other means and has invaded the market for window glass in a major
way.
 In 1953, automobile manufacturers introduced fiberglass-plastic bodies. Today, such
materials are used in architectural panels to sheathe the walls of buildings.
Photochromic glasses have been developed that turn dark when exposed to light and
clear up when the light source is removed.
 The late 1900's brought important new specialty glasses that include transparent glass
ceramics, which are used to make cookware, and chalcogenide glass, an infrared-
transmitting glass that can be used to make lenses for night vision goggles.
 Scientists and engineers entered the field in increasing numbers, and new products
emerged from years of intensive research As a result, the glass industry has now
become a high specialized field.

Science behind Glass


In medieval European cathedrals, some panes are thicker at the bottom than they are at
the top because over several centuries, it has flowed towards the bottom.
LIQUID OR SOLID?
So people believed glass to be liquid. And, because glass is hard, it must be a supercooled
liquid.
However, glass is actually neither a liquid—supercooled or otherwise—nor a solid.

It is an amorphous solid—a state somewhere between those two states of matter. It is a produced
by cooling molten material so that the internal arrangement of atoms remains in a random or
disordered state, similar to the arrangement in a liquid. On the contrary, ordinary solids have
regular crystalline structures, like salt and sugar, with their millions of atoms lined up in a row.

Figure 1. Atomic structures of a typical solid (left) and glass (right).


Composition. In spite of thousands of new formulation for glass during the past 3 decades, the
key ingredients have often remained the same. A typical glass contains formers, fluxes,
and stabilizers.
 Formers make up the largest percentage of the mixture to be melted. In typical soda-
lime-silica glass, the former is silica or silicon dioxide in the form of sand.
 Fluxes lower the temperature at which the formers will melt. Soda or sodium carbonate
and Potash or potassium carbonate, both alkalis, are common fluxes. Potash glass is
slightly denser than soda glass.
 Stabilizers make the glass strong and water resistant. Calcium carbonate, often called
calcined limestone, is a stabilizer. Without a stabilizer, water and humidity attack and
dissolve glass.

TYPES OF GLASS
1. Fused silica
- is also known as vitreous silica. It is made by the high-temperature pyrolysis of silicon
tetrachloride or by fusion of quartz or pure sand.
2. Alkali silicates.
- Sand and soda ash are simply melted together to produce sodium silicates, having a range of
compositions from Na2O.SiO2 to Na2O.4SiO2.
3. Soda-lime glass
- Soda-lime glass constitutes 95% of all glass manufactured
- commonly used for containers of all kinds, automobile and other windows, flat glass and
tableware.
4. Lead glass
-lead oxide has become the substitute for calcium oxide at a percentage of 92
-This glass is important for optical work, because of their high index of refraction and dispersion,
and for electric light bulbs and neon-sign tubing because of its high electrical resistance.
5. Borosilicate glass.
– has a low expansion coefficient, superior resistance shock, excellent chemical stability, and
high electrical resistance.
- The laboratory glassware made from this glass
6. Special glasses. Colored and coated, opal, translucent, safety, optical, photochromic glasses,
and glass ceramics are categorized under this type. All of these have varying compositions
depending upon the final product desired.
7. Glass fibers.
-This type of glass is produced from special glass compositions that are resistant to weather
conditions.
- This glass is low in silica, about 55%, and low in alkali.

Methods of Manufacture
Production of glass varies depending on its type.
The manufacturing procedures may be divided into four major phases: (1) melting, (2) shaping
or forming, (3) annealing, and (4) finishing.

Melting. Glass furnace has two classifications—pot furnaces and tank furnaces.
Pot furnaces,
- are used advantageously for the small production of special glasses
-These are employed principally in the manufacture of optical glass and art glass by casting
process.
- It is difficult to melt glass in these vessels without contaminating the product or partly melting
the container itself, except when platinum is used. In tank furnaces, batch materials are charged
into one end of a large tank build of refractory blocks.
- The glass forms a pool in the hearth of the furnace, across which the flames play alternately
from one side and the other.
- The product is worked out of the opposite of the tank.
Shaping or forming.
-Glass may be shaped through machine or hand molding.
- During this relatively short time the glass changes from a viscous liquid to a clear solid.

Shaping or forming a glass depends on what type product is to be produced


Window glass.
The prior method of producing a window glass is an extremely arduous hand process that
involved gathering a gob of glass on the end of a blowpipe and blowing it into a cylinder. The
ends were cut off, and the hollow cylinder split, heated in an oven and flattened.

In the Fourcalt process, a drawing chamber is filled with glass from the melting tank. The glass
is drawn vertically from the kiln through a so-called ‘débiteuse’ a rectangular clay block that
shapes glass into a sheet as it is drawn through it
Plate glass. The raw materials are fed into one end of the furnace, and the melted glass, at a
temperature as high as 1595oC, passes through the refining zone and out the opposite end in an
unbroken flow. The molten glass passes between two water-cooled forming rolls. It enters the
annealing lehr then polished, inspected then cut into plates to be distributed in the market.
Float glass. This glass was developed by Pilkington Brothers in England. The process employs
the tank furnace melting system and the molten glass passes through refining zone into a narrow
canal. The molten glass is conducted along the surface of a pool of molten tin in an oxidizing
atmosphere under closely controlled temperature
Blown glass. The machine making of bottles is only a casting operation that uses air pressure to
create a hollow.

Annealing.
-This step reduces strain by using a lehr, or annealing oven.
-It briefly involves two operations: (1) holding a mass of glass above a certain critical
temperature long enough to reduce internal strain by plastic flow to less than a predetermined
maximum and (2) cooling the mass to room temperature slowly enough to hold the strain below
this maximum.
Finishing. All types of annealed glass must undergo certain finishing operations. It includes
cleaning, grinding, polishing, cutting, sandblasting, enameling and gaging. Although all these are
not required for every glass object, one or more is almost always necessary.

Special glasses
1. Fused silica glass
– made by fusing pure silica, but such products are usually blebby and difficult to
produce in transparent form.
- manufactured by vapor-phase high temperature pyrolysis of silicon tetrachloride
-it is used for telescope mirrors.
2. High-silica glass

- contains approximately 96% silica and 3% boric oxide, and the rest is alumina and alkali.

-the glass is immersed in a 10% hydrochloric acid bath for sufficient time to permit the soluble
phase to be virtually all leached out

- is extremely stable to all acids except hydrofluoric which attacks this glass considerably more
slowly than others

Colored and coated glass.


-Colored glass may be one of three types: (a) Color is produced by the absorption of certain light
frequencies by agents in solution in the glass. The coloring agents of this group are the oxides of
the transition metals, especially the first group, Ti, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni and Cu. The color is
caused by differences in state oxidation.
(b) Color is produced by colloidal particles precipitated within an originally colorless glass by
heat treatment.
(c) Color is produced by microscopic or larger particles which may be colored themselves, such
as selenium reds (SeO2) used into traffic lights, lantern globes and etc.

Coated glass is made by depositing transparent metallic films on the surface of clear or colored
glass. The films are designed to provide specific transmission and reflection characteristics.
Opal, or translucent, glasses are clear when molten but become opalescent as the glass is worked
into form. It is produced by growing nonmetallic crystals from nucleated silver particles
developed from an original clear glass containing silver.
Safety glass. There two categories under this type of special glass: (1) laminated safety glass and
(2) heat-strengthened or tempered safety glass.
Laminated safety glass, the most widely used, consists of two sheets of thin plate glass with a
sheet of non-brittle plastic material between. The glass and plastic are pressed together under
moderate heat to seal the edges. The glass is subjected to moderate temperatures and hydraulic
pressures.
Tempered, or strengthened, glass is very strong and tough. It used for doors and windows of
automobiles and for pipe. It possesses high internal stresses and, if the surface is broken, shatters
into many pieces. Its manufacture involves controlled heat annealing.

Photochromic silicate glass.


It has unusual properties that include optical darkening in light from ultraviolet through the
visible spectrum, optical bleaching or fading in the dark and thermal bleaching at high
temperatures. The photochromic process is the manufacture of a glass in which submicroscopic
silver halide particles exist, which react differently from ordinary photographic silver halides
when exposed to light.

Fiberglass.
- are used to reinforce various plastics and the composite product is fabricated into pipes, tanks,
and sporting goods, such as fishing rods and skis.
- A special glass that is low in silica is used for the production of fibers. Research has been
conducted to produce a fiber for the reinforcement of concrete that would not be attacked or
weakened by alkali.
-The most successful would be the glass containing up to 17% ZrO. This additive makes the
glass very expensive, and it is also difficult to produce fibers from it.
-Fibers produced from a slate-limestone glass are claimed to be easier to produce than zirconia-
glass fibers.

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