A Touch of Glass

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An infant's first introduction to glass is perhaps via the feeding bottle much before coherent thoughts arise. After that glass fires childish imagination when a Prince finds a glass slipper belonging to his mysterious dance-partner who leaves the ball at midnight. As a teenager, the mirror is often an inseparable companion. A little later in life, the debate moves to the nature of glass: is it a super- cooled liquid or an amorphous solid? What makes its structure so interesting and its properties such an amalgam of opposites?

Primitive man mined Obsidian-a naturally formed volcanic glass of sorts. The ancients taxed it even as they created enduring works of art that command astounding prices at auctions today. Modern humans value glass no less. To an artist, glass is a perfectly malleable medium; colourful or colourless; transparent, translucent or opaque as fancy demands. To a scientist, glass is the perfect medium too; enabling the creation of spectacles, microscopes, binoculars, telescopes and cameras. To an architect, glass is the perfect medium to clad state-of-the art- buildings. The environmentalist is happy because glass can be recycled eternally.

Glass is a conglomerate of contrasting characteristics...it shatters if dropped but can stop bullets. This book explains the 'hows' and the 'whys' of glass, in an extremely lucid way. From fantasy to fantastic facts, this book reveals all about gorgeous glass.

Sukanya Datta is Senior Principal Scientist working with the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, and posted in Kolkata. She has a doctoral degree from the University of Calcutta and has been actively involved in the popularisation of science and science communication for over two decades. She has served as a Resource Person for All India Radio, National Book Trust, Publications Division, Vigyan Prasar, and CSIR-Human Resource Development Centre. She has authored and co-authored several popular science books, science fiction short stories and children's books.

Translocation from one city to another, i.e., from one way of life to another is never easy; particularly not when the move is triggered by situations beyond one's control. For me too relocating to hometown Kolkata after over two decades was not an easy task. As cities, New Delhi and Kolkata march to different drummers; the pulse beats differ. The idioms in which these cities speak are different too. I struggled to adjust. I needed an escape.

The Central Glass and Ceramic Research Institute, Kolkata, which carries out pioneering work in the field of glass and ceramics presented a terrific escape route. The study of glass seemed to me a world as fascinating and as mysterious as any fairytale where imagination runs riot or the deepest reaches of science where facts that exist are often stranger than fiction. The more I read; the deeper I entered the realm of glass, the more enamoured I became.

Glass was the first material to be mined; primitive man sent out mining parties to look for Obsidian...a volcanic proto-glass of sorts. Warriors fashioned spearheads and arrowheads out of Obsidian. Ancient Indian glass beads and bangles decorated the beauties of that age. Glass bottles once held the tears of the mourners in ancient Persia and Egypt. The pyramids housed the glass jewellery once worn by royalty. The bones of the owners are dust now but the beads and bottles still breathe their tales. The glass slipper of Cinderella is not just a tale; modern brides have wed wearing wedding dresses and accessories made of glass. And in 2016, Taiwan built a glass church shaped like a blue, high- heeled slipper.