What is Glass?

I thought you might be curious, so I am sharing the following information from Wikipedia, ENJOY!

Glass ingredients

Pure silica (SiO₂) has a melting point of about 2,000°C (3,632°F). While pure silica can be made into glass for special applications (see fused quartz), other substances are added to common glass to simplify processing. One is sodium carbonate (Na₂CO₃), which lowers the melting point to about 1,000°C (1,832°F); "soda" refers to the original source of sodium carbonate in the soda ash obtained from certain plants. However, the soda makes the glass water soluble, which is usually undesirable, so lime (calcium oxide (CaO), generally obtained from limestone), some magnesium oxide (MgO) and aluminum oxide are added to provide for a better chemical durability. The resulting glass contains about 70 to 72 percent silica by weight and is called a soda-lime glass. Soda-lime glasses account for about 90 percent of manufactured glass.

As well as soda and lime, most common glass has other ingredients added to change its properties. Lead glass, such as lead crystal or flint glass, is more 'brilliant' because the increased refractive index causes noticeably more "sparkles", while boron may be added to change the thermal and electrical properties, as in Pyrex. Adding barium also increases the refractive index. Thorium oxide gives glass a high refractive index and low dispersion, and was formerly used in producing high-quality lenses, but due to its radioactivity has been replaced by lanthanum oxide in modern glasses. Large amounts of iron are used in glass that absorbs infrared energy, such as heat absorbing filters for movie projectors, while cerium(IV) oxide can be used for glass that absorbs UV wavelengths (biologically damaging ionizing radiation).

Properties such as density and melting point vary greatly depending on the material added to the silica: density can range from light display glass with 2.37 g/cm³ to high lead-content flint glass with 7.2 g/cm³, while melting points can range from 500 to 1650 °C.^[13] These ranges can be exceeded, but usually at the cost of stability or practicality.

Glasses that do not include silica as a major constituent may have physico-chemical properties useful for their application in fibre optics and other specialized technical applications. These include fluorozirconate, fluoroaluminate, aluminosilicate, phosphate and chalcogenide glasses.

Under extremes of pressure and temperature solids may exhibit large structural and physical changes which can lead to polyamorphic phase transitions^[14] . In 2006 Italian scientists created an amorphous phase of carbon dioxide using extreme pressure. The substance was named amorphous carbonia(a-CO₂) and exhibits an atomic structure resembling that of ordinary window glass ^[15].