| Abstract Scope |
In celebrating the International Year of Glass, it is instructive to think about all of the places where glass is found and what its presence says about the conditions that make its existence possible. Also, it is useful to think of all of the applications of glass. Beginning with finding glass in moon rocks up to and including being able to make glass largely at room temperature, what do these materials have in common that allow them to be grouped together as glass? This leads to a closer look at the sol-gel process, which has been used to make glassy materials for more than forty years. Some of the new forms of glass include so-called melting gels, which combine some characteristics of organic polymers with the trademark characteristics of transparent and amorphous silica glass. |