Five Lesser-known Facts About Glass That Will Blow Your Mind

Glass is a ubiquitous product in our everyday life- not only as bottles, jars, and window-panes, it is found in our utensils, household items, gadgets, and many more things. It’s made by melting silica, soda ash, and limestone together at a very high temperature. This man-made material often leaves us puzzled. Perhaps the most peculiar fact about it is that it behaves like a solid material, but it’s not. Well, there is more strangeness involved with it that raises many questions. So, with that in mind, our Australian assignment help team has compiled some of the most interesting facts about glass.

Take a look below!

Missing Crater’s Glass Trail

Although glass is mostly created in laboratories, it is also considered to be an ingredient of meteors. About 800,000 years ago from now, a massive meteor, measuring 20 Kilometres wide smashed into the Earth. After entering the earth’s atmosphere, there had been a glass fallout over an area of 22,500 square kilometers, the footprint of which was later discovered from terrains of Australia and Asia. In 2018, many glass beads, each having a width of a human hair was found from Antarctica. They were named as microtektites, and scientists found that they comprise low levels of sodium and potassium. This suggested that these beads were likely the farthest fringe of the elusive crater. When the Antarctic microtektites were compared to ones from Australia, the latter had higher levels of sodium and potassium ,and thus, thought to be a step closer to the point where the massive cosmic rock would have fallen.

The Shaolin Needle Trick

Shaolin monks of China are popular for having agile martial arts skills. But recently, a man from this community had been in the news for doing something unusual. He threw a needle from a pane of glass which popped a balloon on the other side, that too without breaking or piercing it. If you are wondering how this can be possible, then the answer is that the glass had broken at a molecular level. But again that goes against the scientific theory that glass molecules are linked in a network that shares any pressure against it. And, cracks happen when molecular links fail. Scientists say that if a needle can avoid bending and is thrown with accuracy, a deep crack will form, and there will be little resistance to stop it from passing through.

Glass Tends to be a Crystal

After doing extensive research for years, scientists concluded that glass is neither a solid nor a liquid. A sheet of glass cannot be said as solid because it’s brittle. At the same time, we cannot say it is a liquid as its molecules remain intact. It has been found that glass atoms remain in the same way as that of a gel- slow and blocking each other’s way. In 2008, it was discovered that glass atoms form a 3-D pentagon like structure when cooled down. And, as pentagons cannot be arranged in an orderly way, the glass atoms appear as a random mess. It was also found that glass atoms try to form a crystal, but their 3-D pentagonal arrangement prevents this from happening.

Radioactive Clue to Moon’s Origin

“How was our moon formed?” is still a bone of contention among scientists. However, the glass forged by the first nuclear test in 1947 gave a clue that it resulted from a collision between the Earth and a planet-sized body about 4.5 billion years ago. This was discovered by delving into the chemical compositions of the glassy residue, Trinite that was found at the nuclear test site. Trinite was primarily composed of arkosic sand, quartz grains, and feldspar that was melted by the atomic blast. Later in 2017, it was discovered that Trinite and lunar material are similar enough which proves that the latter react in the same way to high temperatures.

Glass As Radioactive Storage

At the present time, disposing of the nuclear waste is a serious concern as it may contaminate our land, water, and other resources, which would ultimately affect the life on earth. In 2018, a team of researchers at the US Department of Energy found an effective way for the same. After carrying out some experiments regarding this, it was declared that by mixing the nuclear waste with glassmaking ingredients they could be completely vitrified. This idea will now help in tackling with the millions of gallons of toxic tanks that remain in nuclear power plants around the world.

Hope you enjoyed reading these above-mentioned amazing facts about glass. Well, there are a lot more about this unique material than you can know by reading the books and journals published by various metallurgical research institutions across the world. However, if loads of academic writing projects are not letting you do this, then seek assistance from our subject-oriented experts. They have so far helped many students across the nation with high-quality projects.

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