Dangerous winds cause glass loss in NYC
Heavy wind gusts in New York City forced city officials to issue warnings and close sidewalks as glass panels rained downs on certain parts of the city. The wind gusts, which reached 60 mph at times, were part of a storm system that moved through the Midwest and Northeast over the weekend and on Monday. Read more
Iconic Glass Structures – China Central Television Headquarters
Construction on the tower was delayed by a massive fire that ripped through an adjacent structure in 2009. The fire caused extensive damage to the building under construction. The CCTV building was nearly complete at the time of the fire, and pushed back the building’s completion by about three years. Read more
Woman hopes glass straws will eliminate plastic
A Michigan woman is hoping to eliminate plastic drinking straws by providing an ultrastrong glass substitute. Daedra Surowiec, of Milford, MI envisioned glass as a way to eliminate some of the millions of plastic drinking straws that end up in landfills annually. She began creating glass drinking straws after taking a class at a local art glass facility.
Glass drinking straws aren’t exactly an easy sell. Prospective buyers are worried that the straw will break while in use. In reality, Surowiec says that of the 10,000 straws her company, Strawesome, produces each year, only about 3% break. The company replaces broken straws at no cost, but Surowiec says that the major culprit behind breakage is impact damage from being dropped. Read more
Research opens up metallic glass
Knowing how and where a metallic glass might break gives engineers an advantage when designing parts that need to be ultra-durable – such as parts for a satellite or space vehicle. Metallic glasses typically deform under stress, but they don’t usually break. Their durability is what makes them ideal for extreme environments, so knowing how, why or when a part may break is critical.
Although the researchers are especially interested in the behavior of metallic glass, their findings could be applied to non-metallic glasses, too. One reason that the glass forms shear bands is that the molecular arrangement of glass (and metallic glass) isn’t crystalline. The amorphous structure of glass allows molecules to continue to move, even when glass has achieved an apparently solid state.
In most cases, when the glass isn’t under stress, molecular movement is imperceptibly slight. When the glass is stressed, however, the molecular movement increases notably. The areas where molecular movement is the greatest coincides with the development of the shear bands in the glass. The shear bands are ultimately the areas of the glass that fail, causing breakage.
The research means that scientists and engineers will be able to more easily calculate the actual strength of glass and metallic glasses quickly. That information can help materials scientists calculate the fitness of a particular glass formulation for a specific application without having to rely on trial-and-error testing.
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Ancient Swedish site may solve nuclear riddle
Researchers may turn to an ancient Swedish fort for advice about how to manage nuclear waste that is currently stored at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State. Vikings built a massive stone fort at Broborg, which is north of present-day Stockholm. The fort contained a ring of rock that has survived largely intact.
The ancient Vikings used glass and rock to create sturdy fort walls, and that’s caught the attention of researchers who are looking for a way to safely encase radioactive waste for long-term storage. The glass fortifications are particularly interesting because they’ve weathered 1,500 years of exceptional cold, heavy snows and frost heaving without breaking apart.
Studies of the ancient glass have been heartening. The material contains most of the same metal oxides that the researchers intend to use to immobilize the radioactive waste from Hanford.
The plan is to mix the nuclear waste with molten glass and heat the mixture to more than 2,000 degrees. The molten glass will be poured into stainless steel forms and left to harden. The resulting solids will be stored indefinitely.
The glass-rock walls in Sweden were built by Vikings with significant knowledge of metal work. Large rocks were moved into place and the spaces between them were packed with small rocks that the builders knew would melt at relatively low temperatures. The rocks were set ablaze possibly with the use of accelerants of some type, and the melted rocks fused together with the larger rocks, creating an exceptionally durable fortification. Researchers estimate that the Broborg site was built between 375 and 550 AD.
They’re also conducting longevity tests on the newly created radioactive glass to determine how long the glass will keep the materials from leaching into areas around it, and to determine whether more radioactive material can be safely mixed with the glass. The goal is to safely encase the radioactive waste in glass for 10,000 years or more.
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: Les Dunford, via Flickr.com
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.
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Photo Credit: Pawel Kabanski, via Flickr.com
Can glass point the way to cleaner energy?
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
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 .
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Iconic Glass Structures – City Hall, London
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
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 .
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