Is it true that glass is still consider a liquid even though it seems to be a solid?

Question

I heard from someone that a glass bottle or glass in general is still considered a liquid but is moving so slowly that it feels solid, is this true at all?

Answer 1

This has been a topic of debate for many years. I used to go onto the chemistry group in usenet and it would come up ever so often. There are two or three classes of solids, crystalline solids, amorphous solids, and a mixture of these two. Ask a welder what happens if they make a weld and the welding material crystallizes. You would be in trouble since the metal of the two parts you are joining is usually quite amorphous, the crystalline weld would not have any "give" to it and would break. Since the metal is considered as an amorphous solid, we could consider it a liquid just as much as some would consider glass. The arguement about the glass panes in the windows being thicker at the bottom I have read stems from the production of glass in the early colonies where to make flat glass they would pour out a puddle of melted glass on a flat surface and quickly flatten it with carbon paddles. The glass would of course be thicker in the middle than out towards the edge. When they cut panes, one edge would be thicker than the other. Now if you were setting these panes in a window, would you put the thick edge up or down. I have also seen it stated that it can be proven that glass flows because a deformed piece of glass tubing will take up that orientation. If this is so, I have several pieces of liquid wood that has been used as closet rods, because they have taken up a bent orientation. Finally I just saw some old Roman glass bottles for sale on e-bay which predate our colonial period and they haven't seemed to have any flow.

All being said and done, from what I know, glass is an amorphous solid and does not flow.

Answer 2

I think the latest wisdom on this issue is that glass really isn't a liquid. It is amorphous (not crystalline), in that it has no single temperature at which it melts. It just gradually gets softer as it is heated, rather than melting at a simple temperature (as ice does at 0 deg C).

However, I have read that the idea that windows in old homes are thicker at the bottom (because gravity has made the glass "run") has been proven to be false.

In short, glass resembles a liquid in SOME ways. But for virtually all purposes (including the thickness of windows in old houses), we can treat glass as a solid.

You should probably look this up in wikipedia to confirm that this information is accurate.

Answer 3

I think in a true solid the atoms arrange themselves in a definite geometry or crystal lattice. In a liquid the atoms have no definite crystal structure; they are amorphous. So to is the arrangement of SiO2 in glass. Technically, a glass is a liquid.

Answer 4

Glass is more accurately described as a fluid than as a liquid.

Other solids are also fluids because they flow, though slowly, like peanut butter.

Answer 5

sturdy you're rather asking are categories of glass obtainable at the instant a sturdy or liquid at room temperature. Melting element is a lot greater than room temp, whether it varies for categories of glass, yet nonetheless in the 1000C selection

Answer 6

That is true. Give it a hundred years and it will droop. Look carefully at some original very old windows in colonial houses. The panes are thicker on the bottom edge, thinner on the top.