Despite millennia of glass making, the physics of what happens when silica sand is melted and cooled is still something of a mystery to researchers. Now, in a groundbreaking window into what happens on a molecular level as liquid silica cools into glass, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have used sophisticated computational techniques to create a compelling model of how and why flow behaviors change during the glass-cooling process.
The study was led by Bu Wang, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering and materials science and engineering at UW-Madison, and Zheng Yu, a PhD student in materials science and engineering. It appears in the July 2022 issue of the journal Physical Review Letters.
Read full story at https://engineering.wisc.edu/news/hopping-atoms-help-predict-how-liquid-silica-cools-into-good-glass/