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Welcome to the age of glass

Physics World June 2022

Physics World

 
Comment: Leader Physics World  June 2022
(Courtesy: Richard Germain / Science Photo Library)

Welcome to the age of glass

This issue of Physics World celebrates the International Year of Glass 

From the Stone Age to the Age of Oil, significant eons are often named after the materials that drove the greatest advances during those times. From windows to cookware, from biological implants to telescope optics, from telecommunications to robots in space, we’re surrounded by glass. So could this transparent material best epitomize the world we live in today?

It’s no surprise then, that the United Nations has declared 2022 the International Year of Glass (IYOG2022). As James Dacey writes in “A transparent tool for a fairer planet”, “The IYOG2022’s central mantra is that we are living in an ‘age of glass’.” Going behind the scenes of the celebrations, he contemplates the versatility of this wonder material and how it underpins many innovations, spanning everything from smartphones to reliably storing a vaccine dose. 

Indeed, you may be reading these very words on a smartphone or tablet with a screen made from Gorilla Glass – a seemingly indestructible material manufactured by US company Corning. As James McKenzie discovers in “The unsung hero of the smartphone”, it hinged on an unanticipated but fortuitous invention many years before. Furthermore, the Internet that we rely on so heavily today is brought to you via hair-thin strands of glass. Christine Tremblay is one of many physicists to have spent a lifetime optimizing these fibre-optic cables, paving the way to better communication across the globe.

What makes glass so multifaceted is the fact that, despite being an amorphous solid, it can adopt many different states. And yet, while glass was first used by humans 4500 years ago, it holds on to its mysteries. Physicists are still trying to work out how a cooling liquid can form a hard glass without any distinct structural changes, while others are attempting to pin down the temperature at which metals turn glassy, as Jon Cartwright explores in “The many secrets of glass”. And as Rachel Brazil investigates in “A glassy solution to nuclear waste” nuclear researchers are teaming up with historians and archaeologists to study ancient glasses and how they hold up over time, with the aim to understand the stability of vitrified nuclear waste.

Alongside these many technical uses, glass is also a perfect example of form and function, with artists having manipulated it for centuries. The Corning Museum of Glass in upstate New York is a good place to plan a visit to this year, if you can, to see the vast collection of glass artefacts. Robert Crease did just that and found himself “Blown away by the wonders of glass”. Even in the darkest of times, glass art can shine a light on what it means to be human, as Ukrainian stained-glass artist Oksana Kondratyeva describes in “The glass that offers hope”.

Glass really is everywhere. So on reflection, it is fair to say that we are living not in an age of glass – but in the age of glass.