That white powder is often called sand. When it is melted it makes glass. It's a pretty amazing process.
:lmao::lmao::lmao::lmao:
it looks too powdery to look like sand, i figured they use special stuff for extra clarity.
you might not believe this but im a glazier.
Well, people made glass for thousands of years using quartz sand and potash,and heat...it's pretty low-tech at the base level: some sand and the ash from burned wood, sort of a type of salt if you will and lots of heat and presto--you've made glass!!! Glass does not have to be very complicated, although some of the really *new*,modern, funky stuff like fluorite glass and the new extra-low dispersion glass dates only to the 1960's. But basically, glass is made of,for the most part, finely powdered.....sand.
I don't know if anybody has seen the incredibly beautiful,strange, sculptural-like artifacts created when a lightning bolt hits sand; the resulting object is an incredibly beautiful thing that typically resembles some sort of crystalline sculpture. it's almost impossible to describe how beautiful these things are, and they are created in less than one second,as the lightning instantly electrifies and melts pure,plain sand.
This is a brief bit from a web source at Answers.com.
Common raw materials used for making glass consist of the following:
Sand: finely divided rock and mineral particles, typically high in silica (silicon dioxide: SiO2).
Soda ash: sodium carbonate: Na2CO3.
Dolomite: calcium magnesium carbonate: CaMg(CO3)2.
Limestone: a sedimentary rock composed largely of the mineral calcite (calcium carbonate: CaCO3).
Salt cake: sodium sulfate, the sodium salt of sulfuric acid: Na2SO4.
Other materials may be used as colorants, refining agents or to adjust the physical and chemical properties of the glass.
There are many different types of glass. In the technical sense, glass is an inorganic product of fusion which has been cooled through the glass transition to a rigid condition without crystallizing.
