Things made of glass can be seen almost everywhere around us. Windows and doors are glazed to make the room bright. There are many kinds of glasses for drinking water, such as glass bottles for soda or wine, glass frames with prizes on the wall, glass vases filled with flowers on the table, and colorful glass balls for children to play with.
Glass fiber is made of colorless and transparent glass balls and processed at high temperature, which is widely used in industry. Glass instruments are indispensable equipment for laboratory scientific research.
Glass is so closely related to us, but do you know where glass comes from? There are many theories about the origin of glass.
The secret discovered by Phoenicians
More than 3000 years ago, there was a beautiful sandbar near the Bayrou estuary on the Mediterranean coast. One day, a large merchant ship passed by with a large piece of natural soda (sodium carbonate). Due to the low tide, the merchant ship ran aground on the beach at the estuary. No way, the merchant ship had to wait until the high tide. As soon as the Phoenicians saw the beautiful sandbars in front of them, they all got off the boat and watched the scenery along the Mediterranean coast with great interest.
At noon, a crew member suggested cooking and having a picnic on the beach. So everyone moved a big pot for cooking from the boat, carried a few pieces of natural soda on their backs, and propped up the pot with soda to cook. After dinner, they packed their things and prepared to return to the ship. A crew member suddenly shouted in surprise, "Look, what is this?" Shiny, so beautiful! "
Everyone gathered around to look carefully and saw that it was exquisite and crystal clear, and no one had ever seen it. It turned out that the beach was covered with quartz sand. When the crew was cooking, the natural soda in the pot reacted with quartz sand at high temperature and turned into glass.
The clever Phoenicians stumbled upon the secret. When the secret was discovered, the production of glass began. Phoenicians used a special furnace to melt quartz sand and soda together to make molten glass. At first, they made glass liquid into large and small glass balls and glass beads and shipped them all over the world. Because people have never seen such round and shiny transparent beads, they all regard these glass beads as treasures and exchange them with gold or jewelry, so the Phoenicians made a fortune.
Soon, the Phoenician secret of making glass leaked out. The Egyptians first made glass in the same way, and many places successfully made glass. Since then, glass production has been generally developed, and the use of glass has become more and more extensive. Now glass products have become a common thing, with low price and good quality.
The first glass in ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt is an ancient civilization. As early as 4000 BC, the ancient Egyptians began to explore the sky, and they discovered the relationship between Sirius's appearance in the early morning and the flooding of the Nile. 3,500 years ago, before the bellows existed, they could use blowpipes to blow furnaces and smelt metal utensils. According to legend, as early as five or six thousand years ago, ancient Egyptians discovered glass.
It is said that a craftsman made pottery. When he took the pottery basin out of the kiln, he saw something shiny inside. This clever and careful craftsman never let go of this little unexpected crystal. He analyzed the composition of clay and tried to burn it again and again, and found that this shiny thing was made of a mixture of sand and soda. This is glass. At that time, he also came up with an ingenious way to connect a clay pot model with an iron bar. Pour the molten glass into the mold. The ancient Egyptians also added various oxidized metals to the ingredients, thus making various colored glasses, blown glass balls, wine vessels, vases and so on. ...
Ancient China People and Glass
At the latest, in the Western Zhou Dynasty more than 3 100 years ago, the ancestors of modern China people began to master the glass manufacturing technology. A large number of glass tubes and glass beads were found in the tombs of Zhuangchungou in Luoyang, Henan Province and Rujiazhuang in Baoji, Shaanxi Province in the early Western Zhou Dynasty. Experts at home and abroad have used modern spectral experiments to identify and come to the same conclusion: China's "lead-barium glass" and western "soda-lime glass" belong to two different glass systems. This fact shows that ancient glass in China was independently manufactured with a unique raw material.
There is a simple and touching folk song called "On Mulberry" in Yuefu of Han Dynasty, which describes the simplicity and beauty of Qin Luofu, a girl who picks mulberry, and says, "There is a temple above her head and a bright moon beside her ears." Some people say that this kind of "bright moon pearl" used as earrings is glass. In the past, many people thought that the ancient glass in China came from abroad. However, according to archaeological research, china glass's production technology has its own origin, which has been confirmed by a large number of archaeological data in recent years.
China glass's invention is closely related to bronze smelting technology. The main raw materials of bronze are malachite, tin ore and charcoal, and the melting temperature is about 1080℃. Glass usually refers to silicate compounds that are melted, cooled and solidified. Quartz sand is the main raw material for melting glass, and other raw materials include soda ash and limestone. The melting temperature is 65438 0200℃. In the process of smelting bronze, due to the melting of various minerals, glassy substances will appear in the discharged copper slag, which are filamentous or massive silicon compounds. Because some copper particles invaded the glass, the glass appeared light blue or light green. These translucent and bright substances have attracted the attention of craftsmen, and they can be made into exquisite glass decorations with a little processing. In this way, through long-term continuous practice and exploration, ancient China people finally mastered the glass making technology and laws.
In ancient China, glass was called "Liulin", "Youzi" and "colored glass". Since the Southern and Northern Dynasties, it has also been called Boli. According to the records in Guangya and Ji Yun, for a long time, "glass" was a general term for glass beads and other transparent substances burned by fire. Since the Ming and Qing Dynasties, people have called "coloured glaze" opaque, which is of course different from glass.
After the Song Dynasty, the types of glassware increased, and their uses were more closely related to people's lives. The Ruins of the Yuan Dynasty Glass Workshop in Ruoqiang, Xinjiang and the Boshan Glass Workshop in Shandong at the end of Yuan Dynasty and the beginning of Ming Dynasty are the earliest glass workshops discovered in China. During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the glass production centers were located in Shen Yan Town (now Boshan County), Guangzhou Port and Jinggang in Zichuan County. In the Qing Dynasty, the Palace Glass Yard was set up in Kangxi, which has been able to produce transparent glass with more than 15 colors and monochrome opaque glass. Silk-wrapped glass, colored carved glass and snuff bottles in the Qing Dynasty are all treasures of glass art in the world.
Although China ancient glass was independently invented by ancient people in China, it developed slowly and maintained its inherent characteristics. It not only has the advantages of bright colors and sparkling, but also has the disadvantages of fragile quality, not high temperature resistance and not suitable for rapid cooling and heating. This is because its main components are lead and barium, and its firing temperature is low. Lead-barium glass is not suitable for making tableware, but only suitable for processing into various decorations, ritual vessels and funerary objects. Therefore, compared with ceramics, bronzes and jades, glassware is narrow and underdeveloped.
China ancient glass was invented and manufactured by local craftsmen alone. It has a long history, exquisite shape and unique ingredients. But China ancient glass is inferior to western ancient glass in some aspects. Archaeological findings show that soda-lime glass has always been the main type of western ancient glass, with good temperature resistance and strong adaptability to sudden cooling and sudden heating. Therefore, the usage and output of ancient glass in the west are much greater than that in China.