#glass

The Cool Way Marbles Are MadeHave you ever wondered how they make glass marbles so perfectly round? They roll them! And roll them, and roll them. Chill Video got a look inside a marble factory, where marbles begin as lumps of molten glass. They then go on a long, tumbling, turning route that keeps them spinning around so they have no chance to flatten out before they cool down enough to hold their shape. Pretty cool, huh? The song accompanying these marbles is the 1991 hit "Aloha Heja He" by German musician Achim Reichel. -via Digg#marbles #glass #factory

Scientists Created Glass That is Harder Than DiamondProfessor Tian Yongjun and colleagues from Yanshan University in Qinhuangdao, northern China, have successfully used fullerene - carbon molecules that are nicknamed buckyballs after American architect Buckminster Fuller - to create a new glass material that is stronger than diamond.The new material, called AM-III carbon, is a type of transparent glass with crystals. It is currently the world's hardest and strongest amorphous material, with a score of 113 gigapascals on the Vickers hardness test. In contrast, most natural diamonds are between 50 to 70, with some man-made diamonds reaching just 100 gigapascals. It is so hard that it could scratch diamonds easily.Yongjun noted that AM-III is about ten times stronger than steel and should be able to stop bullets better than any bulletproof window material available today.Image: S. Zhang, et al/National Science Review#glass #bulletproof #diamond #carbon #fullerene #buckyballs

Glass Nanosphere at its Quantum Limit as Scientists Slowed its Motion to the Lowest Quantum StateThat tiny speck in the middle of the picture above is a glass nanosphere measuring 100 nanometer across (about 100 smaller than the width of a human hair).It's pretty small, but relatively large when compared to atomic-level stuff that scientists used to work with. Over time, physicists have continued to put ever larger objects at their quantum limit by cooling them down to near absolute zero.Now, researchers at ETH Zurich have managed to trap the tiny glass nanosphere using laser and slowed its thermal motion to the lowest quantum mechanical state.From ETH Zurich:The macroscopic object in [professor Lukas Novotny’s] laboratory is a tiny sphere made of glass. Although it is only a hundred nanometres in diameter, it consists of as many as ten million atoms. Using a tightly focused laser beam, the sphere is made to hover in an optical trap inside a vacuum container cooled down to 269 degrees below zero. The lower the temperature, the smaller is the thermal motion. “However, to clearly see quantum effects the nanosphere needs to be slowed down even more, all the way to its motional ground state”, explains Felix Tebbenjohanns, a postdoc in Novotny’s lab. The oscillations of the sphere, and hence its motional energy, are reduced to the point where the quantum mechanical uncertainty relation forbids a further reduction. “This means that we freeze the motional energy of the sphere to a minimum that is close to the quantum mechanical zero-point motion”, Tebbenjohanns says.While much of the scientific findings are academic, this achievement may one day help in creating a much more sensitive sensor technology.#quantumphysics #laser #nanosphere #glassImage: ETH Zurich

This is How Recycled Glass Bottles Are MadeAmericans toss out about 10 million metric tons of glass every year. Only a third of that gets recycled, and the rest ends up as trash in landfills - this is a shame because glass can be crushed, blended, melted and recycled endlessly to make new glass products without any loss of quality.#recycling #glass #glassbottle #culletsHere's a short video clip of how crushed bottles and jars are made into granular materials called cullets, which are then melted and recycled into new bottles.