What’s glass, and how are modern-day researchers enhancing its properties?

Abstract

You’d think we would know everything there is to know about glass by now. It’s been around for thousands of years, and it’s practically everywhere: in the walls of high-rise commercial buildings, in the windows of houses, in the windshields of automobiles and airplanes. Then there’s fine crystal, cookware, bottles, jars, and yes, chemical glassware—just to mention a few other products made of glass. Still, just this year, researchers at Corning debunked a popular urban legend about glass. The legend states that glass is a supercooled liquid and points to stained glass windows in medieval cathedrals as evidence. Because glass flows slowly over time, the legend goes, some of those windows end up thicker at the bottom than at the top. That just ain’t so. The researchers used modeling and measurements and determined that stained glass of the type found in Westminster Abbey actually flows a maximum of about 1