I assume the gloves are there so nobody gets cut by accident.
I would have thought that glass would be the absolute easiest material to recycle. It's effectively sand, after all. It could go into coastline; it could be remelted into new glass; it could go anywhere that sand can go.
I wouldn't have thought about the problems of weight and shipping of the recycled glass to its final, useful location.
Here's to hoping we can get all of this stuff worked out, because I'm trying to use more glass and less man-made polymers at any opportunity I get.
I have to hunt down some of those metal oxides to add to my glass in matsci class.
Just look at the possibilities...
source - from YouTube video above
Oh, and the video talks about how some metal oxides (erbium and holmium, in particular) change color in different light sources, but that doesn't diminish how pretty they all are.
source - from YouTube video above
I may make a project out of producing that rainbow up there for myself.
Anybody want to pitch in to share in the purchase of the various oxides? I know I won't be able to buy less than like a quarter pound each, and I'll only need like twenty grams
I make glass with some regularity in my material science class. We batch glass and add in manganese oxide (purple), chromium oxide (green), copper oxide (light blue), and cobalt oxide (dark blue) to produce colors.
From watching this video, I'm thinking I may need to buy some new crucibles and try other oxides to check out more colors. I'm not as worried about their color under UV light - though that is kind of gorgeous - but rather under various visible light sources.
I've seen the reverse spherification technique of using sodium alginate and calcium chloride solutions to produce edible, gelled products (Kool Aid worms, gelled drink spheres, cocktail pods). Sometimes the calcium chloride is swapped out for calcium lactate because it's really the calcium ions that are necessary for the process.
But using that process to make gelled glass which can be shaped in ways that glass normally couldn't be shaped is pretty amazing. All respect to Karen Lise Krabbe for developing this technique. If you want to learn more, you can check out her ebook on the technique.
Anybody know of a better, reliable, cheap source of neodymium oxide than thesesources? I'll be honest that 1/2 a pound - even 1/4 pound when we're using less than a gram per batch - would last me pretty much forever.
You might've seen the factory tour videos of Kokomo Opalescent Glass that I've posted before
If so, you might also have seen my comments that the lack of PPE used when the glass ingredients are being measured out. I comment on that every year with my students because I make them wear N95 masks when they measure out the silica and other glass batching ingredients. They're doing it once, and I insist on PPE. The Kokomo folks are assumedly doing that every day and - at least as of the time of the videos being filmed - they aren't using any breathing protection at all.
Today's video works as a contrast to that with Kokomo representing an old-school, 'that's how we've always done things' look at manufacturing, and the Bullseye Factory Tour shown above shows how more modern manufacturing should look.
I went looking for more Bullseye factory tour videos to check for PPE again. The above one was posted in 2017, and it shows PPE. The below one was posted in 2016, and it shows PPE. There's another that's dated 1979 that doesn't show the same PPE, but it also doesn't show the ingredients being measured out, and that's where I'm most concerned about the use of PPE masks. It does, however, show smoking on the floor of the glass factory which feels incredibly dated.
The second video below, the one from The Oregonian specificially mentions some of the environmental concerns involved in the production of glass. It's more about the use of heavy metals, but it's a valid concern.
I've heard about and watched videos about the float method of producing flat, plate glass in which molten glass is poured onto a river of molten tin. The tin cools the glass very slowly and allows the glass to cool perfectly flat and smooth resulting in plate glass that can effectively be infinitely long.
I've also heard about crown or table glass (click here and scroll down a bit) in which an inflated ball of glass was cut open and spun into a flat disk. The larger the disk could be spun, the larger the panels of mostly flat glass that could be cut from that disk. The panels would by necessity be thicker on one side (the side nearer to the center of the disk) than on the other.
Cylinder blown glass - as shown in the above video - requires a ball of glass with a bubble to be blown then swung into a longer and longer cylinder which is then cut open and laid flat to produce the flat pane of glass. The larger and longer the cylinder, the larger the pane of flat glass.
Float glass is much cheaper, but this cylinder glass process is far more fascinating to watch.
About thirteen minutes into the above video, the YouTuber shows a screenshot from the Corning Museum of Glass's website...
...that asks whether the PYREX stamp in all caps definitely tells that the PYREX item was made with borosilicate glass - something I'd been told was a definitive tell.
According to the Corning Museum website, "the change from upper to lower case signified a re-branding of the trademark Pyrex® in the late 1970s but is not a conclusive way to determine, historically, what type of glass formulation the product is made from."
So that's apparently out the window.
The video does go on to explore the various other ways of differentiating borosilicate from soda lime pyrex: the blue tint, visibility in mineral oil, even a not-very-scientific drop test onto a patio block.
In the end, the best that the host came up with was to look for a made in France mark. Apparently the French know to use only borosilicate glass.
We'll start with the video debrief of the driver with the armored vehicle manufacturer after the fact so we're all aware that things worked out fine for the people you'll see in the next two videos which are the original footage - first one inside the vehicle, second one a dashcam pointed out of the video.
We've had impressive videos of bulletproof, composite glass before, but this is a really impressive application of that material in its designed use. And, of course, the host sits in the car at the very end while one of his coworkers fires another two shots at him. Nuts, man...
And the final video is from an American morning show providing some context on the interior video that was making its rounds on social media at the time.
Heck of a first day on the job for the guy in the passenger seat.
I've never been to the Pacific Northwest - not further north than the Redwoods National and State Parks in Northern California, anyway.
Might have to get to the Tacoma/Seattle area to check out the Museum of Glass.
This video is an un-narrated walking tour of that museum with occasional annotations in the top corner of the video. Not a ton of information - certainly no science - just glances at pretty glass.
Here Dr Derek explores the history of glassmaking through modern glass like Gorilla Glass including how modern glass is made stronger, how it's tested, why glass is transparent for light, and lots more.
I'm going to have to give this article a couple more read-throughs to get all the content in it.
The article - from Physics Today's January, 2016 issue - goes into peer-reviewed detail of the thermodynamics of glass's formation, methods of forming glasses, a defining glass as a specific state of matter. I know the science would blow the heads off of our Princeton matsci students and would likely push my AP chemistry students to their very edges of understanding, but I learned a lot in reading the article and will go back through it a few more times to get a little more out of it.
That looks a whole lot like solgels to me, but I'll admit that my knowledge of solgel chemistry is about twenty five years out of date and based on a single summer of research at Miami University (no, not University of Miami).
The video summarizes researchers' findings that amino acids can form glasses with an index of refraction close to that of silica glass, adhesive properties, and a natural inclination to form convex lens shapes...and that self heal themselves as they rehydrate themselves.
Park Gruell in Barcelona is one of the most magnificent mosaic collections that I've ever seen, and I'm a sucker for pretty much any mosaic construction. This video does make me a little sad, however, as I wasn't aware that the glass industry had largely left Venice, one of its historic homes.
Ferrock is created from waste steel dust (which would normally be thrown out) and silica from ground up glass, which when poured and upon reaction with carbon dioxide creates iron carbonate which binds carbon dioxide from the atmosphere into the Ferrock.
Roughly 95% of the Ferrock is made from recycled materials, Ferrock is both stronger and more flexible than normal Portland cement, allowing it to be used in highly active environments where there is a consideration for seismic activity.
At 28 days, the strength of Ferrock concrete exceeds that of conventional concrete by 13.5 percent for compressive strength, 20 percent for split tensile strength, and 18 percent for flexural strength.
From the University of Arizona...
"This all started from an accidental discovery in a lab, which is actually the way it usually goes," [Ferrock inventory David] Stone says. "That was back in 2002, and I included as much as I knew in my doctoral dissertation. But the work goes on. It has taken years to get just a basic understanding of the chemistry involved. But this shouldn’t be surprising, since scientists are still trying to figure out Portland cement and they’ve had 200 years.
"I am into this for the long haul. Time is on our side, since in this era of global warming unsustainable processes like cement manufacture will have to give way to greener alternatives."
As always, I am guardedly hopeful but skeptical until I start seeing Ferrock showing up in buildings.
