Is Glass a Liquid or a Solid?
Until now, researchers’ understanding has been splintered at best, with mutually incompatible interpretations of the physical processes underlying the emergence of amorphous solids (glasses).
Now a team of scientists from the University of Bristol and Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz in Germany may have found the missing fragment, enabling the reconciliation of differing interpretations.
In the thermodynamic interpretation, upon sufficient cooling, a very unusual material known as an ‘ideal glass’ would form.
Such an ideal glass, like a crystal, has only one way of organizing the constituent atoms – yet mysteriously, is amorphous and disordered.
The paradox of how there can be only one way of arranging the atoms in a disordered material remains, but measurements made by the Anglo-German collaboration indicate that their samples are very close to the ideal glass.
The Bristol team, led by Dr Royall and Dr Francesco Turci, worked with Professor Thomas Speck in Mainz to produce novel methods to produce samples exceptionally close to ideal glasses.
Dr Royall said: “In doing so, they found that the dynamical interpretation of the glass transition seems to end at a ‘critical point’, which is close to, or even coincides with, the temperature at which the ideal glass is formed.
“In other words, the dynamical and thermodynamic interpretations of the glass transition are different reflections of the same underlying phenomenon.”
Contacts and sources:
Paper: ‘Nonequilibrium Phase Transition in an Atomistic Glassformer: The Connection to Thermodynamics’ by Francesco Turci, C. Patrick Royall, and Thomas Speck in Physical Review
Source: http://www.ineffableisland.com/2017/08/is-glass-liquid-or-solid.html
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In medieval European cathedrals, the glass sometimes looks odd. Some panes are thicker at the bottom than they are at the top. The seemingly solid glass appears to have melted. This is evidence, say tour guides, Internet rumors and even high school chemistry teachers, that glass is actually a liquid. And, because glass is hard, it must be a supercooled liquid.
Glass, however, 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. And yet glass’s liquidlike properties are not enough to explain the thicker-bottomed windows, because glass atoms move too slowly for changes to be visible.
Solids are highly organized structures. They include crystals, like sugar and salt, with their millions of atoms lined up in a row, explains Mark Ediger, a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “Liquids and glasses don’t have that order,” he notes. Glasses, though more organized than liquids, do not attain the rigid order of crystals. “Amorphous means it doesn’t have that long-range order,” Ediger says. With a “solid—if you grab it, it holds its shape,” he adds.
When glass is made, the material (often containing silica) is quickly cooled from its liquid state but does not solidify when its temperature drops below its melting point. At this stage, the material is a supercooled liquid, an intermediate state between liquid and glass. To become an amorphous solid, the material is cooled further, below the glass-transition temperature. Past this point, the molecular movement of the material’s atoms has slowed to nearly a stop and the material is now a glass. This new structure is not as organized as a crystal, because it did not freeze, but it is more organized than a liquid. For practical purposes, such as holding a drink, glass is like a solid, Ediger says, although a disorganized one.
Like liquids, these disorganized solids can flow, albeit very slowly. Over long periods of time, the molecules making up the glass shift themselves to settle into a more stable, crystallike formation, explains Ediger. The closer the glass is to its glass-transition temperature, the more it shifts; the further away from that changeover point, the slower its molecules move and the more solid it seems.
Whatever flow glass manages, however, does not explain why some antique windows are thicker at the bottom. Other, even older glasses do not share the same melted look. In fact, ancient Egyptian vessels have none of this sagging, says Robert Brill, an antique glass researcher at the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, N.Y. Furthermore, cathedral glass should not flow because it is hundreds of degrees below its glass-transition temperature, Ediger adds. A mathematical model shows it would take longer than the universe has existed for room temperature cathedral glass to rearrange itself to appear melted.
Why old European glass is thicker at one end probably depends on how the glass was made. At that time, glassblowers created glass cylinders that were then flattened to make panes of glass. The resulting pieces may never have been uniformly flat and workers installing the windows preferred, for one reason or another, to put the thicker sides of the pane at the bottom. This gives them a melted look, but does not mean glass is a true liquid.
Physicist Philip Gibbs completely discredits that bullshit.
“It is sometimes said that glass in very old churches is thicker at the bottom than at the top because glass is a liquid, and so over several centuries it has flowed towards the bottom. This is not true. In Mediaeval times panes of glass were often made by the Crown glass process. A lump of molten glass was rolled, blown, expanded, flattened and finally spun into a disc before being cut into panes. The sheets were thicker towards the edge of the disc and were usually installed with the heavier side at the bottom.”
Perhaps people should do some research before posting disinformation. I understand that people that know how to use Google think they are smarter than people that have been studying this crap their entire lives!
Glass is liquid crystal and as such is slowly losing its shape under the influence of gravity, liquid crystals come in all shapes and forms but the best known for their uses in electronics as flat speakers which distort when current is applied, optical amplifiers and LCD displays for TV’s and computers. Their properties alter when a force is applied to them such as heat, vibrations and current, some are more reactive than others and Glass is a liquid crystal at the extremely nonreactive edge of the class consisting of a silicon dioxide an extremely stable compound.
Look up the most expensive speakers… For $8000 you can get the best speakers and all it is, is a one metre tall metal bar. That’s it. No magnets. No wires inside it. Nothing at all but a normal looking metal bar.. Id have to re read it myself to be exact but FARK!
This entire article is retarded. Glass is an amorphous solid meaning it is in a state between liquid and solid.
OFFICIALLY GLASS IS THE SLOWEST MOVING LIQUID ON THE PLANET. Look at hundred year old windows. The glass is very thin at the top and fat on the bottom and it’s taken a hundred years for the liquid on top to travel to the bottom of the Pane.
Used to make windscreens and Australian safety standards are the toughest on earth.
I see you are posting the same disinformation bullshit as the Anonymous dipshit above.
“It is sometimes said that glass in very old churches is thicker at the bottom than at the top because glass is a liquid, and so over several centuries it has flowed towards the bottom. This is not true. In Medieval times panes of glass were often made by the Crown glass process. A lump of molten glass was rolled, blown, expanded, flattened and finally spun into a disc before being cut into panes. The sheets were thicker towards the edge of the disc and were usually installed with the heavier side at the bottom.” Philip Gibbs, independent physicist
You guys are a perfect example of “if it’s on the internet it must be true”
Science is screwed up on this one – the glass in my windows, eyeglasses, etc. is solid.