Solder vs. Glass Rod

See what really sets glass apart from metal, and then begin to understand why humans have invented such odd ways of shaping it while hot: core-forming, fusing, slumping, and—oddest of all—glassblowing.

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Howto & Style

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• Corning Museum of Glass
• glassmaking properties
• corning
• museum
• glass
• makingglass
• howto
• NewYork
• NY
• glassmaking
• makeglass

[ActionMan153]

@SolomonJonesIsBack Well, I guess it would be a liquid, but I'm sure it would have to be heated up like a motherfuck.

[Dierwolf2000]

LISTEN UP. i will mtake no replies. Glass is an amorphous semi solid. Metal, and most all other materials has a crystalline molecular structure. there's a repeating pattern to how they are arranged. NOT SO with glass (and several others), within which lies a completely random lattice work of molecules. This allows for both transparency, as well as extreme enough surface tension to facilitate blowing.

[SolomonJonesIsBack]

@ActionMan153 I wasn't aware of this. That's very interesting. And I'm not saying you're wrong (i'm more just thinking out loud), but I bet in theory if you heated it up enough you could get it to flow. I could be wrong though, and thanks for correcting me.

[ActionMan153]

@SolomonJonesIsBack Actually, have you ever seen liquid glass? Its like a gel when heated up. Never does it reach a full liquid state.

[SolomonJonesIsBack]

@HawtGlass That's a myth. It's because of the old manufacturing methods they used to make glass that it's like that. Glass is NOT a liquid at room temperature, that's a common misconception. It also does have a melting point.

[LaserDarkDX]

Does salt have the same liquid properties?

[Desopolis]

Metal has a "soft" area as well, putting it in front of a 2000 degree torch makes it liquefy to quickly, take a metal rod, say one of the super small punties and try to bend it with a torch.. it doesnt just burn through, it glows and becomes malleable..

[marmaladekamikaze]

Not even close to absolute zero? got ya!

[marmaladekamikaze]

Old techniques for making panes of glass are not as good as today's standards and glass from the old methods generally had thickness gradients along its thickness axis, more times than not the installer of the pane would install it so that the thickest edge was closest to the ground to make it more stable and less likely fall out before he could permanently fix it to the frame.

[infernobegins]

That is a spurious argument. How do you know that the difference in thickness is not part of the manufacturing process? You must design an experiment to test if it really flows at such low temperatures.