Cracking a controversial solid state mystery

PA 33/09 February 5 2009 Scientists can easily explain the structural order that makes steel and aluminium out of molten metal. And they have discovered the molecular changes that take place as water turns to ice. But, despite the fact that glass blowers have been plying their trade since the first century BC, we have only just begun to understand what makes molten glass solid. One hundred and fifty years after the construction of Crystal Palace at the Great Exhibition, scientists at The University of Nottingham and the University of California, Berkeley in collaboration with the University of Bath, have presented an explanation of how atoms behave as glass cools and hardens. The secret of glass making came to Britain with the Romans in 55 BC. But only now do scientists believe they are a step closer to unravelling the controversy that surrounds the question: what makes solid glass different from the molten liquid from which it is formed? Juan Garrahan, Professor of Physics, in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Nottingham said: "Snapshots taken with x-rays show that in ice, water molecules fit together in an ordered array, which is called a crystal, while in liquid water, the molecules are jumbled. Scientists can understand why ice is rigid and liquid water is fluid largely from these structural differences. Glass, on the other hand, does not offer this explanation because a snapshot of the molecular structure of solid glass is almost indistinguishable from that of the molten liquid. Both appear to be jumbled random collections of atoms. This observation is at the heart of the problem: if the solid state of glass has a molecular structure just like that of the liquid, how can it be so rigid?