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Archaeologists find 2,000 year old Polish glass factory

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Archaeologists find 2,000 year old Polish glass factory

Archaeologists find 2,000 year old Polish glass factory

Archaeologists have discovered a 2,000-year old workshop that apparently produced glass and metal products. The site, on Mount Grojec in south central Poland, contained furnaces, glass beads, glass making equipment, grinders and waste glass. According to the researchers, the factory took in raw glass and metal from elsewhere and created finished goods at the site.

The team plans to examine the raw glass for clues about its origins. The researchers, from the University of Wroclaw, suspect that the materials could have come from as far away as the Mediterranean. The find is surprising because archaeologists had previously thought that no glass making facilities existed in Poland prior to the Middle Ages.

Proof that glass and metal were worked extensively in the area changes the way archaeologists think about the societies that occupied the areas at the time. Evidence of human habitation in the area dates back to the 5th and 6th centuries, BC, but until the discovery of the glass furnaces, researchers had not been able to determine that significant economic activity had taken place there.

Archaeologists found large quantities of glass products near the furnaces. Included in the finds were colored beads and cracked objects that had been abandoned by their makers due to production defects. Crucibles at the site are believed to have been used for smelting bronze. In addition, the archaeologists found grinders, which would have been used to make finished goods.

Also in the area surrounding the glass furnaces were a few buildings that appeared to be homes. Despite the finds, the archaeologists know little about the people who inhabited the area during the time the glass factory was operational. The initial area was excavated from 2012-2014, but the researchers will publish their findings this spring.
Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. Glassprimer™ glass paint can be used in both interior and exterior applications and can help reduce solar heat gain in some applications. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Pawel Kabanski, via Flickr.com

Can glass point the way to cleaner energy?

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Can glass point the way to cleaner energy?

Can glass point the way to cleaner energy?

A researcher at Georgia Tech University thinks that glass may help us understand how to create cleaner energy. Electricity, which is the most common form of generated energy on Earth, is largely generated from burning “fossil fuels” like coal and natural gas. Although electricity itself is “clean,” the process to produce it is pretty dirty. Reducing demand for “dirty” electricity could help reduce global warming without sacrificing the availability of electricity.

Finding ways to reduce demand for electricity is particularly important as more countries in developing nations build their electrical infrastructure. Professor Asegun Henry believes that the key to reducing electricity demand may be found by studying heat transfer at the atomic level.

To unwind the mystery of what happens among atoms, Henry studied glass. In doing so, Henry was able to explain why the thermal conductivity of glass increases as its temperature rises. Unlike other materials, as the temperature of glass rises, it becomes better able to transfer heat among glass atoms.

To find out why, Henry looked at the phonons in glass. Phonons are subatomic particles – on par with electrons and photons – but they come from the collective vibration of atoms in a material. Phonons help scientists predict the thermal conductivity of conventional solids – those that form a crystalline structure.

Glass isn’t an ordinary solid, and its molecules don’t form a crystalline structure. The formulas that scientists use to predict thermal conductivity in crystalline solids don’t work for amorphous materials like glass. Collective atomic vibrations in glass are very different, so they’re much harder to describe mathematically. Unique atomic vibrations can be created in glass by clusters of just a few atoms.

The working assumption was that the small, unique or localized vibrations didn’t make any meaningful contributions to heat transfer among the atoms in glass. Henry’s research challenged this assumption and found that these localized vibrations contribute significantly to heat transfer among the atoms in glass. He also determined that the localized vibrations were also responsible for the increase in the thermal conductivity of glass as the temperature increases.

Understanding how heat transfers through glass could potentially lead to discoveries that reduce heat transfer through glass. That’s important because glass used in buildings is responsible for a substantial amount of heat loss. Interrupting heat transfer among glass molecules could significantly reduce the demand for electricity by making building glass more efficient.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. Glassprimer™ glass paint can be used in both interior and exterior applications and can help reduce solar heat gain in some applications. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Andy Smith, via Flickr.com

Radioactive glass gives clues to Moon’s origin

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Radioactive glass gives clues to Moon’s origin

Radioactive glass gives clues to Moon’s origin

Men have probably spent more time contemplating the Moon and its origins than any other celestial body, except perhaps the Sun. Over time, we have concocted dozens of theories about where the Moon came from, but we’ve lacked the evidence to support or disprove most of them. Some unique glass may change all of that.

In July 1945, the first nuclear test – code named Trinity – created a radioactive glass known as “trinitite.” The glass, which extended about 350 meters outward from the blast site, was created from materials on the desert floor at the time of detonation. Trinitite has a green color, and is slightly radioactive, but it also has some unique properties that are similar to those found in moon rocks collected during the Apollo missions.

Some traces of trinitite remain at the original blast site, and the material is thought to be safe to handle, but it is now illegal to scavenge the material. In the 1940’s and 1950’s however, collectors often picked up trinitite and it still circulates among collectors.

But what does trinitite glass have to do with the Moon? A researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego believes that zinc and other inclusions in trinitite mimic what happened during the Moon’s creation. The most popular theory of how the Moon came to be involves a cataclysmic collision between the Earth and a wayward planet-sized body. The collision produced debris, which eventually developed into the structure we know as the Moon.

Zinc and other “volatile elements” vaporize at high temperatures. The trinitite that was created closest to the 1945 blast site is depleted of these volatile elements, while trinitite created farther from Ground Zero contains a higher concentration of volatile elements and less overall depletion. As it turns out, moon rocks show the same depletion of volatile elements as the trinitite closest to the blast site. This supports the theory that a violent, high-temperature event produced the debris that later became our Moon.

While many people would argue that nothing good has come from the nuclear age, it is possible to use the residual materials from the blast to help us understand more about our planet, and moon formation in our universe.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. Glassprimer™ glass paint can be used in both interior and exterior applications and can help reduce solar heat gain in some applications. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Mouser Williams, via Flickr.com

Iconic Glass Structures – City Hall, London

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Iconic Glass Structures – City Hall, London

Iconic Glass Structures – City Hall, London

In today’s installment of our series looking at iconic glass structures, we take a look at City Hall in Southwark, England. City Hall is the home of the Greater London Authority, but is not technically in London, nor is it a true municipal building. Although the building houses the Office of the Mayor and the London Assembly, the building is privately owned.

City Hall sits on the south bank of the River Thames and was planned and constructed between 1998 and 2002. The building was designed by architect Norman Foster, who was heavily influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, Bauhaus architect Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe and Swiss-French architect Le Corbusier. Foster, who initially studied at the University of Manchester, completed his graduate work at Yale University. For a period of time, Foster also collaborated with Buckminster Fuller, the futuristic architect and designer of the geodesic dome. Like Fuller, Foster often worked to design novel housing models for low-income and urban dwellers. Foster was also known for his industrial and commercial building designs.

Construction on City Hall was completed at a cost of about $54 million. The building was constructed on land that had been used for wharves. GLA occupies the building on a long-term lease. It features an unusual bulbous shape that is designed to reduce energy consumption. Although the design employs a double glass façade, tests have shown that the building is not particularly energy efficient.

The building has a generally round shape at the base, meaning that it has no designated front or back side. The interior includes a helical walkway that ascends from the base to the top of the building. The swirling walkway is reminiscent of two other Norman Foster creations, the reconstructed Reichstag Dome in Berlin and 30 St. Mary Axe in London. The open design of the building is meant to convey the transparency and accessibility that modern democratic processes require.

The building contains 10 stories, and provides nearly 20,000 square meters of office and meeting space. The building includes an open-air viewing deck that is sometimes available to the public. Although the claims of the building’s energy efficient design have been questioned, City Hall uses only about one-quarter of the energy of a typical, similarly sized building in London.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. Glassprimer™ glass paint can be used in both interior and exterior applications and can help reduce solar heat gain in some applications. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Bill Smith, via Flickr.com

New “powerless” glass can cool buildings

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New "powerless" glass can cool buildings

New “powerless” glass can cool buildings

A team of researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder has developed a novel material that can cool buildings without consuming any power. The material, which is a thin film composed of silver and glass in a polymer known as polymethylpentene, can be produced less expensively than comparable films made from other materials.

The film works because the solar radiation passes through the polymer, but reflects off of the silver layer. The silver layer does not absorb the solar radiation. Instead, the glass reflects the heat, which is created by infrared waves, away from the glass.

The film has been tested under midday heat – the point at which the infrared waves are most intense – and it has performed very well. The new material can be produced quickly and efficiently, using a roll to roll process. The finished film is about as thick as a piece of aluminum foil, like the kind used in a kitchen.

The team will continue to test the material to determine its overall durability and longevity. The team will also experiment with a “cooling farm” in 2017. According to the University of Colorado researchers, 10 to 20 square meters of their material would keep an average sized home continuously cool during the summer. Having said that, they also caution that the film isn’t something that can simply be applied to a home’s roof and left in place, because while it will cool the home effectively in summer, it will also cool a home in the winter – an undesirable condition, especially for homes in the northern part of the country.

Researchers at Stanford University developed a similar film in 2014, but that composition used alternating layers of silicon dioxide and hafnium dioxide. This film is more expensive to produce, and hafnium dioxide is in limited supply. The University of Colorado Boulder team uses commonly available materials. Both materials have a surface temperature that’s less than the surrounding air temperature, even in midday heat.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. Glassprimer™ glass paint can be used in both interior and exterior applications and can help reduce solar heat gain in some applications. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: davebloggs007 , via Flickr.com

New glass coating can keep greenhouses cooler

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New glass coating can keep greenhouses cooler

New glass coating can keep greenhouses cooler

A research team from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore has developed a specialized glass coating designed for use in greenhouses. The coating allows light to penetrate the structure, but diminishes the amount of infrared light that can enter. The result is greenhouses that are cooler and better for the plants inside them.

The coating can block about 90% of the heat-generating infrared light waves from the Sun. Reducing heat is important in greenhouses because too much heat can kill plants or stunt their growth. The coating was made by combining heat-absorbing nanoparticles and inorganic oxides.

The coating was developed at the request of university officials, who were looking for ways to cool the atrium of a campus building. The resulting coating, which was applied to the roof of the building, has reduced the interior temperature by more than 15°F.

The next step is to test the coating in the field, which means applying it to a local greenhouse. Overly warm conditions inside the greenhouse can cause plants to wilt. The research team intends to measure the effect of the coating on plant growth.

In addition to helping reduce temperatures in greenhouses, the researchers see applications for it in other food-producing industries, such as fish farms. The coating could reduce the temperature in fish hatcheries. Reducing the temperature there could allow more food to be made available for larval fish.

One of the benefits of this coating is that it is less expensive to produce and apply than current heat-reflective coatings on the market. The coating can also be applied to acrylic to achieve similar results.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. Glassprimer™ glass paint can be used in both interior and exterior applications and can help reduce solar heat gain in some applications. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Oregon Department of Agriculture, via Flickr.com

Could regulations spell the end of glass buildings?

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New glass coating can keep greenhouses cooler

New glass coating can keep greenhouses cooler

Regulations directed toward reducing energy consumption could spell an end to the glass buildings that have dominated the landscape architecture since the end of World War II. Glass façades are almost standard elements in building design today, but they don’t provide much cover when it comes to energy efficiency.

In addition to not being a great thermal insulator, glass façades often increase the amount of energy a building consumes in the summer, primarily by increasing the temperature inside the building. Increased internal temperatures mean increased use of air conditioning, and an increased load on power plants.

Proposed changes to Canada’s National Energy Code for Buildings that could take effect in 2017 could change the landscape for modern architecture. A new formula for calculating thermal bridging and a requirement for heat and energy recovery could mean that glass façades will no longer measure up for Canadian construction.

If adopted, the regulations wouldn’t actually prohibit the use of glass, but it would require more expensive glass in order to conform to the new rules. Commercial construction costs are always significant, so seeking less expensive or more readily conforming materials may lead to a change in building design.

Thermal bridging is at the center of one of the proposed changes. The term “thermal bridge” refers to areas of a building that have a much higher rate of heat transfer than materials around it. Without specialized coatings or formulations, glass has a limited ability to prevent the transfer of heat into or out of a building. Glass façades and windows are often the primary route for heat transfer. Under current rules, this heat transfer is calculated using a particular formula that many experts believe understates the amount of heat transfer due to glass.

The new regulations would require an extensive thermal analysis to identify and reduce heat transfer between the building envelope and the outside environment. Making a building compliant with new regulations could mean reducing the amount of glass and other low-quality insulators, and diminishing heat transfer as much as possible.
Other proposed changes to the code include regulations that would require minimum energy performance improvements for a building’s roof, windows and doors. The public comment period on the code changes closed on December 9, and the updated code is expected to be published sometime in 2017.

Glassprimer™ glass paint is a specialized glass coating that bonds permanently to glass surfaces. GlassPrimer also makes a glass surface molecular activator that is designed to work with UV-inkjet glass printing processes. Glassprimer™ glass paint can be used in both interior and exterior applications and can help reduce solar heat gain in some applications. For more information about Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit the rest of our site. If you’d like to purchase Glassprimer™ glass paint, please visit our online store .

Photo Credit: Government of Prince Edward Island, via Flickr.com

Corning will display Tiffany glass mosaics

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Corning will display Tiffany glass mosaics

Corning will display Tiffany glass mosaics

The name Louis Comfort Tiffany is virtually synonymous with stained glass. Tiffany was an artist whose career spanned the 19th and 20th centuries. He was most closely associated with the Art Nouveau movement, and worked with glass, jewelry, ceramics and metals. Although he is closely associated (by name) with Tiffany & Co., Louis Comfort Tiffany was actually the son of the company’s founder, Charles Lewis Tiffany.

Tiffany studied under George Innes and Samuel Colman as a painter. His early paintings were heavily influenced by French landscape painter Leon Belly. Despite his training as a painter, he became deeply interested in glass as an artistic medium, and formed a working relationship with several different artists in his late 20’s and early 30’s. Although that collective didn’t survive, while it was active, the artists developed practical artistic items like wallpaper and furniture.

Tiffany received important commissions to redesign or redecorate some high visibility residences, including the Mark Twain House and the White House under Chester A. Arthur. Tiffany used his own glass designs extensively in these commissions. Theodore Roosevelt, who advocated for interior designs that complemented the White House’s original architecture, removed much of Tiffany’s work on the White House during a later renovation.

Tiffany began to work exclusively with glass in the mid-1880’s. He often made his own glass to ensure that the glass contained the artistic properties he was looking for. He experimented extensively with colors, textures and techniques to achieve the iconic Tiffany look. In addition, Tiffany used copper foil in place of lead to connect colored glasses together into a unified piece.

While Tiffany was known for his lampshades, he also created artistic windows and room dividers that combined painted glass and stained glass. Tiffany built his own glass furnace and exhibited his works at high profile events, including the 1893 World’s Fair and the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris.

While most closely associated with his windows and lampshades, Tiffany also created glass mosaics, and had a dedicated mosaic workshop at his design and fabrication facilities. If you’ve never seen a Tiffany mosaic, you’re in luck. In May, the Corning Museum of Glass will open an exhibit displaying more than 50 of Tiffany’s mosaics. The mosaics employ some of Tiffany’s pioneering techniques, including the use of opalescent and iridescent glasses.

The mosaics are exceptionally colorful, vibrant and detailed. In addition to the mosaics themselves, the museum exhibit will also present design notes, samples and photographs, which will help the visitor to understand the exhaustive design and fabrication process used by Tiffany and his studio of more than 300 artists.

Tiffany’s mosaics, which are made up from multiple glass panels, aren’t limited to museums. Many of his original mosaics still survive, and are installed in private homes and commercial buildings around the country.

The museum exhibit will be available to the public from May 20, 2017-January 7, 2018.

Photo Credit: Gloria Bell, via Flickr.com