Glass

Glass is an amorphous or non-crystalline solid. Because it is often transparent and chemically inert, glass has found widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in window panes, tableware, and optics. Some common objects made of glass like "a glass" of water, "glasses", and "looking glass", have become named for their material.

Glass is most often formed by quenching, or rapid cooling of the molten form. Some glasses such as volcanic glass are naturally occurring, and Obsidian has been used to make arrowheads and knives for millions of years. Archaeological evidence suggests glassmaking dates back to at least 3600 BC in Mesopotamia, Egypt, or Syria. The earliest known glass objects were beads, perhaps created accidentally during metalworking or the production of faience, which is a form of pottery using lead glazes.

Due to its ease of formability into any shape, glass has been traditionally used for vessels, such as bowls, vases, bottles, jars and drinking glasses. Currently, soda–lime glass, containing around 70% silica, accounts for around 90% of manufactured glass. Over the centuries, more expensive, or more technically difficult additives have produced borosilicate glass, which is very durable, leaded glass, or "crystal", which is very clear, and many speciality glasses. Glass can be coloured by adding metal salts or painted and printed with vitreous enamels, leading to its use in stained glass windows and other glass art objects.

The refractive, reflective and transmission properties of glass make glass suitable for manufacturing optical lenses, prisms, and optoelectronics materials. Extruded glass fibres have applications as optical fibres in communications networks, thermal insulating material when matted as glass wool to trap air, or in glass-fibre reinforced plastic (fibreglass).