physicists on mystery-why does glass exist?

[David Hopman]

https://www.wired.com/story/physicis...uN1p7y3UQ8P77o

[Paul Thompson]

Glass is a liquid in suspended animation, a liquid whose molecules curiously cannot flow.

I thought the "glass is a supercooled liquid" theory had been largely discarded? And I don't think the process of plant amber hardening is the same as melted glass cooling. It seems like amber would harden via sublimation or evaporation.

[Pete VanderLaan]

Why do these articles have to create such bad assertions.

"Other liquids, when cooled, more easily become glass. Silica, for example—window glass—starts as a molten liquid well above 1,000 degrees Celsius; as it cools, its disordered molecules contract slightly, crowding a bit closer together, which makes the liquid increasingly viscous. Eventually, the molecules stop moving altogether. In this gradual glass transition, the molecules don’t reorganize. They simply grind to a halt.
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This is just bullshit.

[Larry Cazes]

Wired.com is NOT what I would call a credible source on Material Science

[Pete VanderLaan]

I think it potentially to be far more interesting is looking at why materials DO BECOME glass. Silica on it's own has a rough road. It needs modifiers to lower the temps to make the solutions possible and THEN it needs stabilizers to stop the action.
THEN, it need, under enormous pressure to be slow cooled so that the material just formed can have the huge pressure, measured in 1'000's of pls per sq inch pressure, relax so that the material formed is stable.

Comparing it to amber is just misguiding. They don't really have that much in common, besides clarity, a nice thing. I like fulgurites myself.

Your pissy management.

[Brian Bradshaw]

Doesn't anybody read Scholes anymore?

[David Hopman]

The article is originally from Quanta magazine and reprinted by Wired.