Is glass considered :
A solid
A liquid
A gas
Or plasma?
The answer coming up a bit later
A science trivia question-multiple choice
by worldtraveller 8 Replies latest jw friends
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stillajwexelder
from a material science point of view it is viewed as a super cooled liquid
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Hortensia
it's a very slow moving liquid, isn't it?
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SacrificialLoon
Yar, supercooled liquid.
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snowbird
plasma
Sylvia
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worldtraveller
Some scientists say this:
Glass is an amorphous solid. A material is amorphous when it has no long-range order, that is, when there is no regularity in the arrangement of its molecular constituents on a scale larger than a few times the size of these groups. [...] A solid is a rigid material; it does not flow when it is subjected to moderate force.
Others state that glass is void of a crystalline structure and therefore is considered a liquid.
I believe it depends on what temperature we are talking about. Average glass melts completely at 1400-1600 degrees C. Some melt as low as 500 degrees C.
My kids says emphatically that it is in fact a liquid. I thought this was interesting.
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stillajwexelder
Temperature is not the answer - if it were then even rock is a vapor (never mind a liquid) at high enough temperature - or gases such as Nitrogen etc are liquids at low enough temperature.
Glass is partially amorphous that is true but it is still a super cooled liquid -the silica tetrahedra ensure it is not toatlly amorphous
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gaiagirl
Glass has been observed to "flow" like the very viscous liquid. In many of the catherdrals of Europe, the panes of glass in the stained glass windows have oozed within their frames and become thinner at the top, thicker at the bottom, even drooping away from the top portion of the frame in places, and flowing over the bottom portion. Of course, they have been oozing for many hundreds of years.
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Sad emo
I knew the answer because of my scientific background
Something I've thought about though, just to tax everyone's brains - what exactly classifies a solid as 'solid'?
Ok, I know, if you thump a brick wall you're gonna get sore knuckles! But really, when you think about it, everything is liquid (or fluid?). Doesn't it depend only on the strength of the chemical bonding under certain conditions as to how fluid anything is. Prime example is the stained glass as gaiagirl wrote.
Everything is on the move all the time. Everything we see is merely the result of 'random collisions' of molecules and atoms.
Gawd, I'm in deep thinking mode already and its only 11am lol!