TI-163Matter1998

Glass is not a slow liquid

Window glass is an amorphous solid. Medieval panes are thicker at the bottom because they were made that way, not because the glass has flowed.

Established2 min read

Glass has a disordered structure, like a liquid that was caught. At room temperature the time required for that structure to flow is longer than the age of the universe, by a ridiculous factor. Edgar Zanotto calculated it for cathedral glass. The windows of the Middle Ages have not creeped under their own weight in any amount a person could measure.

The thick bottoms are from the manufacturing. Crown glass was spun; cylinder glass was blown and flattened. The panes were often installed thick-edge down, because that is the stable way to set an uneven piece. Old glass is lumpy because it was hard to make flat, not because it is a liquid with patience.

Caveats

  • Near the glass transition, which for soda-lime glass is several hundred degrees, glass really does flow. Room temperature is not near the glass transition.
  • The molecular structure is liquid-like in the sense of being disordered. That is not the same as flowing.

Sources

  1. 1Zanotto E. D.. Do cathedral glasses flow?. American Journal of Physics 66, 1998.

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