The chemistry in glass, it turns out that glass is made in this way!
Article Source:
Chemistry in Life Chemistry of the First Affiliated High School of East China Normal University
Glass is crystal clear, difficult to corrode, easy to process into various shapes, he decorates our lives with his superior performance, do you know how glass was born?
Legend has it that a long time ago, a Phoenician merchant drove a cargo ship to transport soda to distant places. Unfortunately, a sudden storm blew on the sea, a storm was coming, and the cargo ship was violently bumpy and unable to move forward, so the Phoenician merchants had to find a nearby island to take shelter from the storm. There were no stones on the beach, so they used natural alkali instead of stones and built stoves to cook and heat.
When the wind was calm, they were going to continue to set sail, but when they were packing their things, they unexpectedly found many shining pearl-like things on the beach, picked them up and put them in the palm of their hands to look at carefully, and the pearls were crystal clear under the sunlight, like the jewels on the top of the gods' heads. The Phoenician merchants were ecstatic, thinking that they were amulets given to them by the gods, and they picked up every "pearl" without missing a beat, took them on board the ship, and thus took them to all over the world. In fact, the "pearl" found by the Phoenician merchants is the glass that is now commonplace in our daily lives.
How is glass produced? Through this story, it is not difficult to discover the mystery: glass is made of sand as the main raw material and soda ash melted. The main component of sand is silica (SiO2), which has a high melting point, but under the action of soda ash (sodium carbonate Na2CO3), the melting temperature of silica is greatly reduced. A flowable molten slurry, that is, water glass (sodium silicateNa 2SiO3), and finally limestone is added, and after cooling the water glass, crystal clear glass is made.
However, if you want to make colorless glass, the raw materials must not contain iron, otherwise if there are divalent iron ions in the glass, the glass will turn green. You must be wondering, why is there a colorful glass now? In fact, it is very simple, as long as different metal oxides are added to the glass, the glass will be dyed in different colors: if cobalt oxide is added, the glass will turn blue; Add cuprous oxide, and the glass will turn red; Add chromium oxide and the glass will turn green; When ferric ions are added, the glass turns brownish-yellow; Add ferric ions and the glass turns green......
In the past, glass was a very valuable thing, and only those princes and aristocrats could afford it, but now, glass has been "in front of the old Wang Xie Hall, flying into the homes of ordinary people". Dressing mirrors, light bulbs, furniture, cups, drink bottles, beer bottles, ...... in our lives It is inseparable from glass; The building has glass, and the hall of the Paris World Fair, known as the Sunshine Building, is covered with steel inlaid with a large area of glass; Glass and reversing mirrors should also be installed on the car; Glass can also be processed into artificial skeletons......
From its birth to the distant future, glass will be a beautiful scenery in human life and make great contributions to mankind
The main components of ordinary glass are Na2SiO3, Ca SiO3 and SiO2. What we see most is the glass installed on the windows of houses, which block the wind and let in light.
If we let hydrofluoric acid help, we can carve various patterns on the glass.
If some metal oxides are added to the raw materials of glassmaking, we can also make stained glass.
If we heat the glass to a certain temperature and cool it sharply, we can also get tempered glass. When the glass is damaged by external forces, it is broken into small obtuse particles, which are not easy to cause harm to the human body, and are safety glass.
The bearing capacity of tempered glass is much higher than that of ordinary glass, and the glass plank road of Zhangjiajie, a famous tourist scenic spot, uses tempered glass with high transparency.
Quartz glass is a special glass that only contains silica, with high temperature resistance and acid resistance, and is a precious glass product that is often used in the manufacture of various precision instruments.
The chemical name of plexiglass is polymethyl methacrylate, which is a plastic with excellent light transmission.
Our current life is inseparable from glass products, not to mention chemical experimental tools.
