We all know that the matter has three states: liquid, solid, gas. Of course, glass is solid, but can you infer what ‘liquid glass’ means or what it looks like? It is not solid, liquid or melted glass. It is a different and unique phenomenon.
What is liquid glass?
It is the fourth state of matter anticipated twenty years ago by material scientists and now it is possible to see it under microscope. It might be difficult to imagine how liquid glass looks like, but it is reported that it seems like lip gloss.
How is liquid glass formed
Typically, solid material is formed when molecules line up and crystalize. Glass is different; before its molecules crystalize, they become frozen. Liquid glass is again different from normal glass; let’s check how.
Two professors at the University of Konstanz, Germany were the first to reveal this new matter in a new paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In their lab, they started with the study of plastic particles in liquid, and ended up with the amazing discovery of liquid glass.
In general, when the material transforms from liquid to solid state, its molecules form lattice patterns: they line up rigidly to form a crystal pattern. With glass, it is a different case. Glass molecules are frozen before they crystalize in a disordered manner.
In the experiment of liquid glass, the scientists used collides which are monocrystalline substances like gels. To be more specific, they used ellipsoidal (oval) not normal spherical (ball-shaped) collides to study their orientation. The two scientists are considered the first to use ellipsoidal shapes in experiments like this, they wanted to check the glass transition process and what goes on during it. But why did they use ellipsoidal not spherical particles? Spherical particles are round in shape and it is difficult to notice their orientation. It is easier, on the other hand, to track the motion of ellipsoidal particles.
What is very interesting is that the two scientists stretched the small particles in order to make them ellipsoidal or elliptical in shape.
What did the scientists reveal?
They discovered new and surprising motion of the particles. They came to a conclusion that at high concentrations, the particles come together in clusters in the same orientation. They prevent each other from rotating. Those particles are not solid, and they couldn’t group together to form liquid matter. That resulted in the entirely new state of liquid glass. Zumbusch, one of the professors, said. “The particles behave like a swarm of fish in which each fish can swim back and forth but cannot not turn left or right. This intriguing type of correlation of the particles’ motion is striking: whereas the particle orientations are locked to each other, their positions are independent.”
Scientists also revealed that different concentrations or densities are an important factor. Why? This is because different concentrations enable scientists to notice changes in motion and direction.
They also found out that some external factors might affect the solid glass state and make it change. If certain pressure or energy are applied to this matter, the particles, which are stuck and clustered together in one direction, will rotate. When they rotate, they change direction and consequently the matter will change from liquid glass to crystal glass.
Finally, people have usually considered glass as a solid material, but not anymore. Now we know that glass can also be liquid which is a unique state in science.
Keywords: liquid glass
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