Making Glass

Making Glass

This experiment comes to us from the Royal Society of Chemistry (link) (hence pardon the spelling and a couple of odd word choices - bung?).

In my material science classes, we make glass beads using borax and nichrome or copper wires. It's a fun and fairly easy experiment. I like, however, the slightly but not hugely more precise nature of this one. I'm also not so sure about the use of lead (II) oxide which is then disposed of by simply dissolving any remnants in nitric acid then diluting it and dumping it down the sink.

I'm not so sure lead (II) oxide (or nitrate by that point, maybe) should go down the drain.

By the way, the link in the article (British Glass, toward the end) is actually here. The link within the article is missing a colon, hence it's broken.