Students learn about science of glass
<p>Abigail Moore melts glass into a bead over a Bunsen burner while Hope Maxwell watches during a chemistry class last week at Whitefish High School.</p>
Art and science melted together at Whitefish High School last week as chemistry students got a hands-on lesson about glass.
Students took turns standing over Bunsen burners inside the science classroom. In one hand a long, colorful glass rod and the other a stainless steel rod. Slowly moving the glass rod over the flame, they heated it until a molten blob formed. They then wrapped the molten glass around the steel rod using the flame to eventually shape the raw glass into a bead.
After the glass cooled they were left with art pieces that were the real world example of the science of glass they had heard in a lecture just moments before.
Teacher Todd Spangler explained that glass is a unique substance — neither a liquid nor a solid — it’s an amorphous solid, in a state somewhere between.
“We’ll look at how they make different types of glass, it’s properties, how it changes as it’s heated and what they do to relieve the stress in glass so it doesn’t crack,” he told students.
Glass when it heats behaves more and more like a liquid until about 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, he noted, when it begins to flow it’s like honey. Glass also has to be cooled slowly and evenly so it doesn’t break.
He demonstrated the molecule structure of glass by having students stick three Styrofoam balls together in a triangle and then randomly adding more groups of three to the original set.
“The glass structure is random,” he said. “The molecules heat up at random and we don’t know where they will break. If the molecules had a repeating pattern we could have a predictable melting point.”
Students also had the opportunity to fuse together multiple pieces of glass in a kiln, again making art from a science lesson.
Spangler explained that the viscosity, the ability of a substance to flow, and the coefficient of expansion, how much the glass expands when heated, describes the behavior of the glass.
“Both of these need to be taken into account when determining if two pieces of glass are compatible and will fuse properly,” he noted. “If the glass isn’t compatible it will break later due to internal stress.”
Spangler said donations and community support helped make the glass projects part of the chemistry curriculum.
The Whitefish Parent Teacher Association provided a $1,500 grant for the kiln and other supplies and Whitefish Community Foundation provided a $5,000 grant for glass supplies.
Melanie Drown with Stumptown Art Studios helped develop the glass fusing work, local artist Traci Staves helped with the bead work, and George Bland, with Montana House of Glass, helped develop the glass work and provided glass examples.