Glass – The Solid That Never Quite Settled

Podcast: Talking Science · Stavros kinnas

Opublikowano: 2026-09-06

There's a persistent piece of trivia that old windows are thicker at the bottom because glass slowly flows downward over centuries, like an extremely patient liquid. It's a wonderful story, and it's wrong, but working out exactly why it's wrong opens up one of the more genuinely strange materials in everyday life. This episode looks at what actually makes glass different from ordinary crystalline solids, how it's made, why it's transparent, how toughened and laminated glass are engineered to fail safely, and how ultra-pure glass fibres ended up carrying the modern internet. You'll come away understanding the...