how flexible is glass

[Trenchtown]

How flexible is glass?

[pawwaw17]

not all that flexibal at room temprature, but all glass does flow like a liquid all be it very slowly, thats why window panes become distorted over a long time, and glass when heated can look like toffee and can be drawn out.

[Eurox]

Thats incorrect actually, there was a theory that glass was the most viscous liquid but it was dismissed here: http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/ Glass/glass.html

[Buenchico]

Like pawwaw 17, I used to believe in the theory that glass 'flowed' over a long period of . This was largely based upon the 'evidence' that old, hand-made glass (e.g. in church windows) was sometimes thicker at the bottom than at the top. It's now recognised that the glass is like that simply because the builders put the thickest edge of the glass at the bottom ;-)

How flexible is glass? I can't provide any figures but you only need to think about fibre-optic cables (or, indeed, fibre-optic Christmas trees) to realise that glass can be incredibly flexible.

Chris

[4lec]

As Eddie said, think of a Fibre Optic thread, that is a glass tube. And they are pretty damned flexible. Its also fun breaking them.

Alec