Have you ever wondered why there are so many types of glass? Glass is a unique material that occurs in a lot of things we use every day, including windows, drink vessels, and digital devices such as smartphones. It seems simple, but glass is really special! There are several types of glass available with different specifications that makes them viable for different applications. Glass, for instance, will be made for being very strong, or very clear, or some other purpose entirely. That is why glass figurine are critical tools enabling us to identify and study types of glass. They teach us about how to tell the different types of glass apart; why each kind is used for something specific.
For something called quality control, glass identifiers are extremely important. And quality control means ensuring that a product is safe to use and meets certain specifications. Depending on the industry, sometimes quality control make or break the whole process, and the same goes for the glass industry as well. It helps make sure the glass items we use every day are safe and meet what consumers want. Glass identifiers are useful in examining the quality of glass according to its characteristics such as the hardness, strength, and clarity. For example, if the glass should be really durable, glass identifiers can test whether it is really strong enough. Glass manufacturers can use glass identifiers to determine whether the glass products they produce have high quality or require some improvements.
Glass does come in many shapes and sizes, you know? It has so many different properties too! There are a couple different types of glass that you will hear about frequently, for example. One is referred to a soda-lime glass, the other is borosilicate glass. The most common glass type is soda-lime glass. It’s used to make the windows, bottles and jars we see and use every day. The glass is produced by a mixture of soda ash, sand, and limestone, which makes it affordable and easy to produce.
Conversely, borosilicate glass is a stronger and more unique type of glass. It is common in laboratories and kitchen utensils such as measuring cups since it can tolerate high temperatures and is resistant to chemicals. This means it will not break easily if heated, which makes it very useful in cooking and science. Glass identifiers differentiate the different types of glass and tell us about the particular characteristics of the types of glass. To understand the differences, we can select the appropriate glass for the correct task!
Recycling of glass is the process of glass waste being crushed, melted and remolded into new products. Glass is also 100% recyclable: it can be melted down and remade into new products multiple times without any degradation to quality. Is this good news for the environment! But not all glass types are recyclable the same way. And recycling can vary depending on the type of glass. For instance, during recycling, if soda-lime glass gets mixed with borosilicate glass, the resulting products will not be as good.
Glass identifiers are able to analyze the glass with various methods such as: light tests, microscopes and, chemical tests to determine more on the composition of what the glass is made of. By passing light through the glass, light tests can determine its chemical composition. Microscopes enable us to examine the physical characteristics of the glass, revealing aspects that our eyes cannot perceive. Chemical tests involve particular substances that are toning for some specific properties of the glass.
This is Qunda speaking, the glass animal figurines company. In the glass-making industry, the glass identifiers that they make ensure the production of high quality glass products. They are also deployed in glass recycling processes to assist with sorting and classifying the various types of glass. In what was described as a “friendly and simple way” Qunda glass identifiers can even be understood and learnt about by (young) readers to identify glass.