What is Glass Made of?

Answer 1

:Sand!...:)

Answer 2

Common glass contains about 70-72 weight % of silicon dioxide (SiO2). The major raw material is sand (or "quartz sand") that contains almost 100% of crystalline silica in the form of quartz. Although it is almost pure quartz, it may still contain a small amount (< 1%) of iron oxides that would color the glass, so this sand is usually enriched in the factory to reduce the iron oxide amount to < 0.05%. Large natural single crystals of quartz are purer silicon dioxide, and upon crushing are used for high quality specialty glasses. Synthetic amorphous silica (practically 100% pure) is the raw material for the most expensive specialty glasses.

Answer 3

Glass is primarilly made of sand. Once sand is heated at a very high temperature it begins to melt. There are two or three chemicals used to make glass and shattered glass itself is used to make new glass.

Answer 4

Sand

Answer 5

Sand is heated at high temperatures to make - glass!! Crazy! Who would have thought the desert was so productive.

Answer 6

Ok, I'm going to give you a short, simple answer. When you superheat sand, it becomes ionized, and theres a lot of really technical stuff, and then it becomes glass. I'm sure one of the other answers will tell you the really technical stuff.

Answer 7

It's sand that's been heated up until it melts, forming glass.

Answer 8

Sand.

Answer 9

What is Glass Made of?

For windows, glass made primarily of melted sand or silica is just fine. But glass can be made from many other combinations of elements tailored for use inside the human body. For example, there are "bioactive glasses" that can be used to aid in the repair of human bones. These glasses eventually dissolve when their work is done. Sometimes, the opposite is desired: a glass that won't dissolve until it reaches a specific destination in the human body. NASA-funded investigator Dr. Delbert Day, the Curators' Professor Emeritus of Ceramic Engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, has developed glasses that are so insoluble in the body that they are being used to treat cancer by delivering high doses of radiation directly to a tumor site.

How Glass is Made

No other kind of factory looks like a glass plant. Huge bins called silos hold the raw materials for glassmaking. These materials are powders that look much alike but can produce greatly different results. Giant roof ventilators and huge stacks release the terrific heat required to melt these powders to a white-hot liquid. At the hot end of the plant are the furnaces.

Mixing. The principal raw materials come to the glass plant in railroad cars and are stored in large silos. The materials are carefully weighed and mechanically mixed in the proper proportions. The mix of ingredients is called the batch. The manufacturer then adds cullet to the batch. Cullet is either recycled glass or waste glass from a previous melt of the same kind of glass. Adding cullet to the batch uses materials that otherwise would be wasted. It also reduces the amount of heat needed to melt the new batch of raw materials. Sometimes, glassmakers produce a new batch entirely from cullet. After mixing, the batch goes to the furnaces in batch cars, in hoppers, or on conveyor belts.

Melting. The mixture melts at 2600 to 2900 °F (1425 to 1600 °C), depending on its composition. In early times, the batch was melted in refractory pots (small clay pots) that were generally heated by wood fires. Special refractory pots today hold up to 3,000 pounds (1,400 kilograms) of glass. They are heated by gas or oil, and a single furnace may contain 6 to 12 pots. Small quantities of optical glass, art glass, and specialty glass still are made in refractory pots.

Larger quantities of glass are made in furnaces that are called day tanks because the process that goes on in them takes about 24 hours. The day tank is filled with raw materials, the glass is melted, and all the glass is used before the furnace is filled again. Day tanks can hold 1 to 4 tons (0.9 to 3.6 metric tons) of glass.

Most glass is melted in large furnaces called continuous tanks. The largest continuous tanks can melt 400 to 600 tons (360 to 540 metric tons) a day for production of flat glass. From 50 to 300 tons (45 to 270 metric tons) of container glass can be melted daily. Smaller continuous tanks are used to produce most other glass products. The operation is continuous. Raw materials are fed into the loading end as rapidly as molten glass is removed from the working end. Loading, melting, and working go on from when the fires are first lighted until they are extinguished at the end of a period called a campaign. A campaign may last as long as 10 years. The length of a campaign is almost always determined by the time it takes the refractory brick walls of the furnace to wear out from the constant heat and friction of the glass.

Answer 10

iam so knowldgeable of these things and belive me that the glass is made of sand and the desert you know what iam mean and there is alot of kinds of glass so taht all ican say hope taht work out

Answer 11

sand.

If I'm not mistaken, the sand is heated until it liquefies. Then it can be molded into a shape. Or something like that!