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Glass in the common sense refers to a hard, brittle, transparent solid, such as that used for windows, many bottles, or eyewear, including, but not limited to, soda-lime glass, borosilicate glass, acrylic glass, sugar glass, isinglass (Muscovy-glass), or aluminium oxynitride.

In the technical sense, glass is an inorganic product of fusion which has been cooled to a rigid condition without crystallizing.Zallen, The Physics of Amorphous Solids, John Wiley, New York, (1983).The physics of structurally disordered matter: an introduction, Adam Hilger in association with the University of Sussex press (1987)Elliot, Physics of amorphous materials, Longman group ltd (1984) Many glasses contain silica as their main component and glass former.Werner Vogel: "Glass Chemistry"; Springer-Verlag Berlin and Heidelberg GmbH & Co. K; 2nd revised edition (November 1994), ISBN 3540575723

In the scientific sense the term glass is often extended to all amorphous solids (and melts that easily form amorphous solids), including plastics, resins, or other silica-free amorphous solids. In addition, besides traditional melting techniques, any other means of preparation are considered, such as ion implantation, and the sol-gel method. However, glass science commonly includes only inorganic amorphous solids, while plastics and similar organics are covered by polymer science, biology and further scientific disciplines.

The optical and physical properties of glass make it suitable for applications such as flat glass, container glass, optics and optoelectronics material, laboratory equipment, thermal insulator (glass wool), reinforcement fiber (glass-reinforced plastic, glass fiber reinforced concrete), and art.

The term glass developed in the late Roman Empire. It was in the Roman glassmaking center at Trier, Germany, that the late-Latin term glesum originated, probably from a Germanic word for a transparent, lustrous substance.R. W. Douglas: A history of glassmaking, G T Foulis & Co Ltd, Henley-on-Thames, 1972, ISBN 0854291172.

General properties, uses, occurrence