its kinda crazy...
how do you think flat glass is made. what if i told you they fucking pour molten glass onto molten tin at like 1000° so it floats & forms a perfectly flat layer & then slowly bring the temperature down until the glass has hardened enough to exit the tin bath.
that's crazy but what about pre-1960 before that method was industrialized?? oh, they would just literally blow that shit into a cylinder and cut it down the middle & reheat it until it became pliable before smoothing it out no big deal.
ooey gooey molten glass, why do you look so enticing yet frightening....
you can't fool me narrator lady, those are the heartiest lads indiana has to offer
my ancestors were glassblowers. Unfortunately they immigrated to Pennsylvania to mine coal and so no cool glass blowing skills were passed down to me.
It's a little more complicated than that. People like to say this as a fun factoid, but it's a little misleading and not strictly "true." It's just that glass has liquid-like properties but only over huge time spans. We define liquids and solids based on how the atoms of a given substance move relative to each other. Yes, over long periods of time, the atoms of glass can move around each other so that it can "flow," as a liquid does. But we're talking hundreds of years or more. Anything you do it that doesn't take that long, it will behave like a solid - it will be a solid. If you do something to it like putting pressure on just one part of a glass sheet and leaving it like that for many years, or putting directional pressure on it like with gravity, over centuries, it behaves like an extremely slow, viscous liquid. For all intents and purposes though, it really is a solid. It makes most sense to say that it's a solid that displays liquid properties over long timescales. Really, all of this is a matter of imprecise language and how "solid" and "liquid" don't make sense under certain (unusual for us) conditions, like at extreme temperatures or pressures, or in this case, over a very long time.
Edit: I was going to edit this comment to add some links to support this but Egon beat me to it with a better link.
Sometimes when I have access to a big enough torch I fuck around with molten glass. Literally the other day I went through an entire $5 can of butane with absolutely nothing to show for it lololol.
yeah this has always been something I've wanted to do, especially since I am constantly collecting new glass vials every month with every prescription refill but I just know I will somehow get a bunch of ooey gooey molten glass on some exposed part of myself & wind up having to explain that I just wanted to play around. a victim of my own caution
*five year old voice* I wanna know how meth pipes are made
I've heard there is a glass-blowing studio located in the Badain Jaran that is said to be able to trace its history back millennia. they are known for crafting the world's finest meth pipes - but surprisingly, this is a task the forge-master usually reserves for apprentices! it is said in some texts that at night, desert travelers may be able to hear the sound of meth pipes as they catch the evening breeze...
ooey gooey molten glass, why do you look so enticing
Sorry for the redditism, but DAE get hungry watching these vids? It probably wouldn't be very healthy, but part of me really wants to eat that molten glass. Yum.
Singing ooey gooey molten glass to the tune of hot cross buns.
I love in the second video the guy picking up panes of glass with no gloves. Then I get to the third video and there are people jogging in front of each other and spilling molten glass on the floor
Glass is such an important material for society, just imagine trying to find alternatives to it for so many applications.
I found YouTube links in your post. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
Link 3:
Mainly the only thing I know about glass is that it's stanky before it becomes glass
