engineering
+ Enlarge Image

“A glass is permanent, but only over a certain time scale. It’s a liquid that just stopped moving, stopped flowing,” said David Weitz, Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics and Applied Physics in Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Department of Physics.

Photography by Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard Staff Photographer

Materials scientists find better model for glass creation

Harvard materials scientists have come up with what they believe is a new way to model the formation of glasses, a type of amorphous solid that includes common window glass.

Glasses form through the process of vitrification, in which a glass-forming liquid cools and slowly becomes a solid whose molecules, though they’ve stopped moving, are not permanently locked into a crystal structure. Instead, they’re more like a liquid that has merely stopped flowing, though they can continue to move over long stretches of time.

full story »

Other engineering stories

all recent title) ?> stories»
foundations environments animal, vegetable, + mineral medicine + health culture + society engineering + technology