Topic: Making Glass: Question & source. Please help!!

[grace says]

Hi.  I am a high school senior and am working on my graduation project for school.  For my project, I have decided to pursue my long-time dream of learning how to blow glass.

The only problem I am currently facing is finding enough resources to write my essay, which (as of now) addresses the question of whether or not making glass is more of an art or a science.  I have found plenty of information on the history of making glass, and numerous sources that touch on the scientific aspects of the craft, breifly describing things like general molecular structure of glass.  I know there is more to the science portion than these sources have let on.  And if I am wrong, I seriously need to change my question...

If any of you know of any sources (books, websites, other) that have thorough and detailed information about the various scientific aspects of making glass, please let me know!

If not, I would love to get some reccomendations for a different question that would be easier/more convenient to research.

Thank ya'll so much!

//Grace

[Frank]

Corning museum should have most that you will need on-line at http://www.cmog.org/ also have a good look at the Archive forum here.

[krsilber]

Grace, sounds like an ambitious project!  Hat's off to you, and welcome to the forum!

It's hard to know just what you mean by the scientific aspects of glassmaking, but I'll post some links that might help and you can respond with questions you have that aren't addressed there.

http://www.sha.org/bottle/glassmaking.htm (and rest of site)
http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Glass
http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/The_Household_Cyclopedia_of_General_Information/howtomak_cge.html     (this is a shortish piece, written in 1881)
http://www.cmog.org/usr/media/aroglass.pdf  This is a collection of short articles from the Corning Museum site (the Glass Resource section) about glass, some of which might be pertinent to your studies
http://www.sha.org/documents/Parks_Canada/The%20Parks%20Canada%20Glass%20Glossary.pdf  This is a whole book online (over 8 MB) that is mostly in the form of a glossary.  I don't know how valuable it will be to you.

That's a start, anyway!

I would think whether glassmaking is more art or science depends on the kind of glass you're talking about.  Glassmaking for modern optical or laboratory purposes (lenses, mirrors, filters etc.) seems more scientific than much of the glass we discuss around here.  Often old glass companies would come up with their formulas through trial and error, and they tended to evolve over time.

[Sue C]

This may help also
http://annuaire.idverre.net/4daction/encyclo_rech_cat_e/153/1

[Cathy B]

Hi Grace, and welcome.

Your question of whether glassmaking is an art or a science depends on the definitions of 'art' and 'science'. There's probably a good argument that glassmaking is an art, in that it tends to rely on leaned, innate judgment or feel, but that it relies on knowledge derived from science. Science is more about finding out how things work, generally from experiment or observation. At least, that's my limited understanding!