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I received some additional information about Carlo Pantano’s presentation on “The Art of Science of Glass” that will be held at 12 noon, March 26, 2010 at Penn State University.

Don’t expect a formal and technical lecture. Instead, Pantano’s presentation/conversation is part of Penn State’s ongoing “Unplugged” luncheon series that is modeled on the Café Scientifique concept that looks for opportunities to have an informal exchange between scientists and the public.

Here is what Pantano - who directs the Penn State Materials Research Institute – tells me he hopes to cover in his presentation:

“Historically, artists and scientists have been very successful collaborators. The glass artists in Italy gave Galileo his first glass lens. Archaeological stained glasses provide models for nuclear waste disposal. The Glass Flowers, which are precise, realistic models of plants, served as models for botanists at the turn of the century. Obsidian, a natural volcanic glass, first served stone age man for utilitarian purposes but progressed to be an artform. Today, both natural and synthetic glasses are widely used to create glass art. (Or, is it art glass?) Moreover, the materials and technology used to create the world-renowned glass art of Tagliapietra and Chihuly are as important to artists today as the samples of arts and craft glass were to the early scientists who made the first spectacles, thermometers, telescopes, batteries and vacuum chambers.

“Yet, we do not really educate across the art-science interface.

“In this conversation, I will describe these and other crossovers between the art and science of glass: glass manufacturing defects that inspire art; stained glass and photovoltaic solar art glass; glass art using a femtosecond laser; the increasing use of glass in architecture and medicine; and the broader impact of glass in our society. I will also describe our DaVinci glassblowing program at Penn State and our recent international excursion to bring artists, chemists and conservation scientists together at the graduate and professional level.

“My primary motivation for the DaVinci program at Penn State is to put real materials into the hands of undergraduate students in any discipline. A material they can make, study, control and be creative with. Glass art, especially glassblowing, familiarizes art students with scientific principles, materials and technology; for science and engineering students, it provides a sense of aesthetics and the importance of creating new ideas through association rather than simply deductive thinking. Artists and scientists may have different practical goals and approaches, but understanding and describing the nature of things is always at the root. Other motivations for the program are to heighten the interest of children and the public in science, and more generally, to introduce students to the real world of interdisciplinarity and the difficulties of communication therein.

The talk will take place in the Executive Room at the Penn State Conference Center Hotel. It is open to the public and includes a buffet luncheon. The event will begin at 12 noon, with the talk to begin at 12:15 p.m. to allow time for people to go through the buffet line. The cost is $8 per person for members of the Penn State Alumni Association and $12 per person for nonmembers. Reservations are required and can be made by contacting Marilyn Engle at mbengle@psu.edu or 814-863-8117. Payment will be accepted at the event by check made payable to Penn State. The deadline to make a reservation is Friday, March 12.

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ACerS member Carlo Pantano, director of the Materials Research Institute, and Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn State University, is a nationally known expert on the science and engineering of glass. But Pantano also knows about the artistic side of the material, too, and uses this as a way to link art and science. In this brief video, he demonstrates his glass-blowing chops, and discusses how he combines the two in his personal and teaching life.

Pantano will be giving a full lecture in March at Penn State about the art and science of glass. Actually, it sounds like the format will be more of a “conversation” in front of a large crowd. I’ll post the details when I get them.

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Credit: Thomas Merton, used under Creative Commons terms

The New York Times has discovered materials science! The newspaper recently published a nice story on the scientific advancements being made to strengthen glass for the ever expanding use of the material in architecture. The glass gurus interviewed include ACerS members Harrie Stevens, director of the Center for Glass Research at Alfred University, Carlo Pantano, professor of materials science at Penn State and William LaCourse, professor at Alfred.

Structural projects almost exclusively use soda-lime glass, made largely from sodium carbonate, limestone and silica. “For years, the basic composition of soda-lime glass has not changed much,” said Stevens.

Stevens, Pantano and LaCourse

And one property of glass has remained constant: glass begins to lose its strength the moment it’s made.

Even one gas molecule can break a silicon-oxygen bond in glass, generating a defect, said Pantano. While glass is very strong in compression, tensile stresses will make these tiny fissures start to grow, bond by bond. “That’s what makes glass break,” he said. “And if it doesn’t break, it weakens it.”

Protective coatings are one way to avoid new cracks, although they can affect transparency, which is the main reason for using glass in the first place. Changing the glass recipe can also make it harder for cracks to form and propagate.

For structural purposes, glass is often strengthened the old-fashioned way — by tempering. This puts the surface under compression, so that even more tensile force is needed for cracks to grow.

For flat glass, heat tempering is most often used. LaCourse said the process takes advantage of one property of glass — that when it cools slowly it becomes denser. By rapidly cooling the exterior of a sheet (usually with air), the surface stays less dense. “Inside it’s still hot, and tries to cool to a more dense structure,” he said. “This pulls the surface into compression.”

Tempered glass may take longer to crack, but it can still break. A primary concern when building with glass is what happens if and when a component breaks. That’s where lamination comes in. In a typical project, multiple glass sheets (one-half-inch thick in the Sears Tower project) are bonded with thin polymer interlayers. The interlayers add strength and, should one of the glass layers break, keep the structure together, and the pieces from falling.

Arun Varshneya, also from Alfred, recently spoke with ACerS about the advantages of an alternative to heat-treated glass: chemically strengthened glass. This seven-minute interview can be seen here.

Already, some engineers are using different glass shapes to reduce the dependence on metal. Other designers think about using different kinds of glass. Using a glass that does not expand much when heated, for example, would enable components to be welded together, forming, in effect, a continuous piece of glass. Conventional soda-lime glass expands too much, so welding introduces stresses that can lead to failure.

Researchers have experimented with welding glass components. But low-expansion glass is much costlier than soda-lime glass. Other engineers are starting to use adhesives to join glass directly to glass.

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Never heard of “glass relockers”? That’s okay. Most people haven’t. Relockers are a category of devices intended to block a burglary of a safe. As their name implies, they relock a safe after the primary lock is cracked.

A glass relocker is based on burying a piece of tempered glass within the walls of a safe. It is attached, usually randomly, to one or more spring-loaded bolts. When a burglar tries to penetrate the layer where the glass is located, it shatters and the locking bolts spring into place.

This may not seem like a terribly sophisticated use of tempered glass, but it is to many government agencies who are concerned about security systems, and it is no accident that glass scientists in federal labs continue to study how to develop better and better glass relockers.

This video shows the efforts of the Discovery Channel’s MythBusters team to bypass a safe protected by glass relockers.

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After nearly a year of behind-the-scenes planning, the American Ceramic Society just announced that it is launching a new journal on advanced glass research. This new peer-reviewed quarterly will be called the International Journal of Applied Glass Science.

The journal’s debut is timely as new generations of glass and glass-related materials are increasingly being called upon to play a role in many of the world’s emerging technologies, including energy, medical, transportation, construction, environmental, optical and defense technologies spheres.

ACerS President John Kaniuk says IJAGS will encompass the description, application, modeling, experimental investigation and manufacture of glass materials.

L. David Pye, dean and professor of glass science, emeritus, at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University has agreed to serve as the founding editor of IJAGS. Pye will be aided by an international advisory board. Pye, who is the past president of ACerS, says the new journal “will advance all of the branches of materials science and engineering, and it will support the growing role of glass applications throughout society.” He said the first issue will be released in March 2010.

ACerS says the production of IJAGS will be done in partnership with leading science publisher Wiley-Blackwell. ACerS and Wiley-Blackwell already have a strong publishing track record and jointly produce two other peer-reviewed journals: The Journal of the American Ceramic Society and the International Journal of Applied Ceramic Technology. These journals are among the most cited ceramic publications in the world.

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