Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Glass is probably the most neglected material in history. It is very important to our lives, even more important than plastic. To me, a world without glass is more difficult to imagine than a geodetic Mars (which most scientists believe is virtually impossible). Without this miracle around us, you wouldn't be able to use a touchscreen phone, turn on a glass light, see a beautiful view from the window, wear glasses, and enjoy a drink in a glass bottle on the nightstand. You will not be able to receive email, phone calls or surf the Internet.

In an article in the Atlantic, glass is called "the most important material for mankind". Douglas main (Douglas Main) wrote: "in order to connect you and me, these words are encoded into optical signals that are transmitted over optical cables at speeds of 300,000 kilometers per second." these signals span mountains, dive under the sea, cross cities and countries, and spread all over the world. The glass in these cables is thinner than human hair and is "30 times more transparent than the purest water." Glass allows us to see and be seen, heard and heard, illuminating our rooms, lives and thoughts.

From the point of view of thermodynamics, glass tends to transform into solid. But glass is an interesting material, in part because the word glass itself is a general term that does not refer to a substance with a specific chemical ratio, but a substance that can be made from an "endless formula" and has specific structural characteristics. However, when we talk about "glass", we understand it as a very specific thing: it is a hard and fragile material, but it can become sticky and flowable with enough heat. Sometimes glass is mistaken for a liquid because it wriggles (albeit very slowly) even when it is cooled. Glass is not like a solid like a rock because its molecules are not as tightly organized as any crystal. Diamonds have a very regular crystal structure, as do ice and crystalline honey, but glass does not. Although glass is more solid and reliable than ice, the arrangement of glass molecules is much less orderly at the molecular level.

In material science, glass is generally regarded as an "amorphous solid". 'it 's neither liquid nor solid, 'says John C. Mauro.

Mauro is a former inventor and now a professor of engineering and materials science at Pennsylvania State University. He has been fascinated by glass since he visited the Corning Glass Museum in New York when he was 6 years old. He recalled that he was "fascinated" by the colors and shapes. Today, he knows the function of glass better than almost anyone, but he is still in awe of the substance. "Glass is a unique thing," he said. "it breaks the pattern."

Beware: this seemingly ordinary and inactive material, which we call glass, actually hides mysteries. At the molecular level, glass is more like a liquid, but from a thermodynamic point of view, glass has a tendency to change to a solid. From a thermodynamic point of view, Professor Mauro explained that glass has a tendency to become solid. At the molecular level, glass behaves more like a viscous fluid than a solid than a solid, but we think of it as a solid because glass molecules move slowly. "philosophically, the glass we look at is very interesting," Mauro said. "when we study other substances, we understand glass clearly." However, right under our noses, there is a scientific miracle-a substance that is expressed in a fascinating and unique way, a substance that is difficult to classify easily. It makes up our lenses, microscopes, binoculars, screens and glasses. Glass gives us a clearer insight into the world, but we seldom really pay attention to glass.

It is the hidden microscopic behavior of glass that makes glass a strange container of beauty, which runs counter to the knowledge we learned about the state of matter when we were young. What we usually come into contact with is that matter has three states: solid, liquid and gas. This is not uncommon in any wild imagination. In spite of this, glass is very special.

Glass is mainly a man-made substance. Although there are some natural glasses in nature, such as black stone and talc, the vast majority of glass is fired by human beings at high temperatures. As far as we know, the origin of glass can be traced back to the Bronze Age in Mesopotamia. About 4000 years ago, humans began to melt silica (sand or gravel) and mix it with small amounts of limestone and soda ash. According to Pliny, the invention of glass was a pleasant accident: the Roman historian believed that glass was accidentally acquired by Phoenician sailors during a picnic on the beach, but since no flame could reach the temperature of melting sand at that time, this view is questionable. Contemporary historians believe that glass may have been discovered in the process of making ceramics or working metals. Compared with baking bread or Roast Lamb Leg, these two processes require higher firing temperature and longer firing time.

Of all the players in the material world, Glass is a good hand magician. The oldest known glass products are similar to gemstones in use and processing. People usually use cold working rather than hot working and cutting rather than melting to process glass. The craftsmen cut, polished and embedded the glass in the jewelry. At some point, our distant ancestors discovered how to cast glass in moulds to make utensils. Before the art of glass blowing was promoted, craftsmen were able to make glass brocade bricks, small mirrors and many different types of utensils that could be used to store wine, perfumes, medicines and other valuable substances.

Around the first year AD, due to the promotion of the Romans and their strict production technology, glass achieved great success. Glassblowing (a technique spread from Syria to Rome) enabled craftsmen (usually slaves) to make glass cups and bowls faster than before. Cheap glasses began to appear in the market. Soon, glass became as popular among ordinary Romans as ceramics. Artists began to try richer art forms with glass, creating vases of Janus noodles and wine bottles decorated with music scenes. Builders began to use glass to build windows, but because the glass was muddy and thick, it was used not so much for lighting as for safety and insulation. We have found traces of glass windows throughout Rome and surrounding cities, including Pompeii's luxurious tiles and well-preserved bathhouses.

The origin of another kind of glassware, lenses, is difficult to trace, because lenses appeared some time before the first year AD. In the Islamic world of the tenth century AD, optics emerged and became an important research field. Mathematicians and scientists have made great progress in understanding and regulating light. During the Renaissance, philosophers, scientists and thinkers used lenses to observe the physical world-the stars above our heads (telescopes were invented in 1608) and the earth beneath our feet (after making microscopes in 1625). For a long time, glass has been regarded as a material that can provide literal light, but it is worth remembering that glass has also laid the foundation for many of our enlightenment.

In the age of the Enlightenment, slides will be born. Slides will be a form of dramatic entertainment, and some people think it's scary, but others think it's hopeful-depending on how people choose to watch it.

Glass can broaden our horizons, but not necessarily deepen our understanding. Slides will be a crazy and weird party. During this time, guests will see moving images of souls, demons and other scary people projected onto walls, smoke or translucent screens. The spiritual light show is achieved through a combination of old and new inventions, including magic lights, magnifying glasses, pepper ghosts and other glass tools that can be used to regulate light and visual effects.

The first big slide will take place in a theatre in Paris after the Revolution of the 1790s. With the eerie background music of the glass harmonica, after waiting in complete darkness for a few minutes, the audience began to see different shapes in the air, seemingly floating and gliding in the air. These "ghosts" are pale and lifelike, and can talk, shout and cry. One of the "ghosts" is a bleeding nun, first getting closer, and then gradually moving away. Later slides will involve the ghosts of recently deceased public figures who are said to have been recruited by scientific forces. Because this is how these programs are promoted: this is the intersection of science and religion, faith and enlightenment. They're scary, but they're also funny.

We beg to be fooled and to be enlightened. Humans love wonders. Among all the players in the material world, I think glass is the ultimate magician. Although glass can illuminate rooms and life, it can also distort reality and cover up the truth. Just as photography can be used as a record of real events, but also can cover up the most basic facts, glass can broaden our horizons, but not necessarily improve our understanding.

In contemporary life, most of us rely more on glass than we think: glass is used not only in our windshields and windows, but also in the optical cables under our feet, which are of great significance. "now we look at each other through the glass screen," Mauro said in an interview. " This makes me strongly aware that the connection between us is fragile. We talked through the remote online video conferencing software Zoom. Mauro continued: "without glass, we wouldn't have a series of information terminals such as tablets and mobile phones." all of these are transmitted through optical signals using ultra-fine glass filaments that we call fiber optics. " Without glass, he said, we would not be able to understand modern architecture, artificial light sources, natural light sources, cars and, most importantly, such a wealth of information.

Mauro stressed the benefits of glass. It allows us to store vaccines, check cells and stare at the stars. But he believes that glass, like all technologies, is "neutral" at its core. "when I think of optical fiber, I think of all the good things it has done for the widespread use of communications, but it has also done a lot of harm," he said. " People can use social media to "spread lies and hatred".

We use glass to tell our personal truth, but we can also use it to create false narratives. I wouldn't be vaccinated without a glass bottle, but if we didn't have a glass screen in our pockets, we wouldn't see the rapid spread of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. Without the glass tube, German glassblower Heinrich Geissler would not be able to observe cathode rays, Ernest Rutherford would not be able to discover the energy contained in the nucleus, and we would have no nuclear reactor or bomb. We don't know that when the atomic bomb exploded, it had the ability to turn sand into glass and into star-shaped fragments that were scattered all over the scene of the explosion and were not found until decades later. Maybe our beliefs will not be so uncertain, so unstable.

Although I agree with most of what Mauro said, I'm not sure whether glass is really neutral or whether there is any technology that can be said to be neutral. I think it is only a generalization to call glass a neutral technology, just as we call glass a solid. And judging whether glass is neutral is far more vague than defining whether glass is solid or not. Technology is not inert. It's not a stone; it's a language. Like a language, we must accept its multiple uses. We can pray; we can lie. Sometimes we do both things at the same time.

But this is the history of mankind. The emergence and promotion of glass is a series of events, one thing leads to another, sometimes these chain reactions end in disaster, sometimes in beauty. When you look at it from one angle, the glass will be full of beauty, and the reflected rainbow light will shine brightly for hundreds of millions of years. When you look at it from another angle, it's hellfire.

Author: Katy Kelleher

Translation: * 0

Revision: Tibetan idiots

Original link: TheStrange life of glass

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ID:cas-iop), author: Katy Kelleher

Welcome to subscribe "Shulou Technology Information " to get latest news, interesting things and hot topics in the IT industry, and controls the hottest and latest Internet news, technology news and IT industry trends.