Glass Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

Trivia quiz questions with answers about glass

Glass Trivia Quiz Questions With Answers

What is glass?
A: Glass is a non-crystalline, amorphous solid that is often transparent and has widespread practical, technological, and decorative usage in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optoelectronics.

The most familiar, and historically the oldest, types of manufactured glass are what?
A: "Silicate glasses" based on the chemical compound silica (silicon dioxide, or quartz), the primary constituent of sand.

The term glass, in popular usage, is often used to refer only to this type of material, which is familiar from use as what?
A: Window glass and in glass bottles.

Of the many silica-based glasses that exist, ordinary glazing and container glass is formed from a specific type called what?
A: Soda-lime glass, composed of approximately 75% silicon dioxide (SiO2), sodium oxide (Na2O) from sodium carbonate (Na2CO3), calcium oxide (CaO), also called lime, and several minor additives.

Many applications of silicate glasses derive from their optical transparency, giving rise to their primary use as what?
A: Window panes.

Glass will transmit, reflect and refract light; these qualities can be enhanced by cutting and polishing to make what?
A: Optical lenses, prisms, fine glassware, and optical fibers for high speed data transmission by light.

Glass can be colored by adding what?
A: Metallic salts, and can also be painted and printed with vitreous enamels.

These qualities have led to the extensive use of glass in the manufacture of what?
A: Art objects and in particular, stained glass windows.

Although brittle, silicate glass is extremely what?
A: Durable, and many examples of glass fragments exist from early glass-making cultures.

Because glass can be formed or molded into any shape, it has been traditionally used for what?
A: Vessels: bowls, vases, bottles, jars and drinking glasses.

In its most solid forms it has also been used for what?
A: Paper weights, marbles, and beads.

When extruded as glass fiber and matted as glass wool in a way to trap air, it becomes a what?
A: A thermal insulating material.

When these glass fibers are embedded into an organic polymer plastic, they are a key what?
A: They are a key structural reinforcement part of the composite material fiberglass.

Some objects historically were so commonly made of silicate glass that they are simply called by the name of the material, such as what?
A: Drinking glasses and eyeglasses.

Scientifically, the term "glass" is often defined in a broader sense, encompassing what?
A: Every solid that possesses a non-crystalline (that is, amorphous) structure at the atomic scale and that exhibits a glass transition when heated towards the liquid state.

Silicon dioxide (SiO2) is a what?
A: A common fundamental constituent of glass.

In nature, vitrification of quartz occurs when lightning strikes sand, forming hollow, branching rootlike structures called what?
A: Fulgurites.

Fused quartz is a glass made from what?
A: Chemically-pure silica.

It has excellent resistance to thermal shock, being able to survive what?
A: Immersion in water while red hot.

However, its high melting temperature (1723 °C) and viscosity make it what?
A: Difficult to work with.

Soda-lime glasses account for about what percentage of manufactured glass?
A: 90%

Most common glass contains other ingredients to do what?
A: To change the properties.

Lead glass or flint glass is more "brilliant" because of what?
A: The increased refractive index causes noticeably more specular reflection and increased optical dispersion.

Adding barium does what?
A: It also increases the refractive index.

Thorium oxide gives glass a high refractive index and low dispersion and was formerly used in producing what?
A: High-quality lenses, but due to its radioactivity has been replaced by lanthanum oxide in modern eyeglasses.

Iron can be incorporated into glass to do what?
A: To absorb infrared radiation, for example in heat-absorbing filters for movie projectors.

Cerium(IV) oxide can be used for glass that absorbs what?
A: Ultraviolet wavelengths.

Fused quartz has very low thermal expansion, is very hard, and resists what?
A: High temperatures (1000–1500 °C).

It is also the most resistant against what?
A: Weathering (caused in other glasses by alkali ions leaching out of the glass, while staining it).

Fused quartz is used for high-temperature applications such as what?
A: Furnace tubes, lighting tubes, melting crucibles, etc.

What is container glass?
A: Container glass is a soda-lime glass that is a slight variation on flat glass, which uses more alumina and calcium, and less sodium and magnesium, which are more water-soluble.

This makes it less susceptible to what?
A: Water erosion.

Lead-oxide glass, crystal glass has a high refractive index, making the look of glassware what?
A: More brilliant (called "crystal", though of course it is a glass and not a crystal).

It also has a high elasticity, making glassware do what?
A: "Ring".

What is Trinitite?
A: A glass made by the Trinity nuclear-weapon test.

Glass has the ability to refract, reflect, and transmit light following geometrical optics, without scattering it due to what?
A: The absence of grain boundaries.

Common glass has what refraction index?
A: Around 1.5.

In the process of manufacture, silicate glass can be what?
A: Poured, formed, extruded and molded into forms ranging from flat sheets to highly intricate shapes.

The materials that make up a particular glass composition have an effect on how quickly the glass does what?
A: Corrodes.

A glass containing a high proportion of alkalis or alkali earths is less corrosion-resistant than what?
A: Other kinds of glasses.

Flat glass for windows and similar applications is formed by the float glass process, developed between 1953 and 1957 by whom? A: Sir Alastair Pilkington and Kenneth Bickerstaff of the UK's Pilkington Brothers, who created a continuous ribbon of glass using a molten tin bath on which the molten glass flows unhindered under the influence of gravity.

The top surface of the glass is subjected to nitrogen under pressure to obtain what?
A: A polished finish.

Container glass for common bottles and jars is formed by what process?
A: Blowing and pressing methods.

This glass is often slightly modified chemically (with more alumina and calcium oxide) for greater what?
A: Water resistance.

Once the desired form is obtained, glass is usually annealed for what reason?
A: The removal of stresses and to increase the glass's hardness and durability.

Art glass and studio glass pieces are colored using what?
A: Closely guarded recipes that involve specific combinations of metal oxides, melting temperatures and "cook" times.

Most colored glass used in the art market is manufactured in volume by whom?
A: By vendors who serve this market, although there are some glassmakers with the ability to make their own color from raw materials.

Naturally occurring glass, especially the volcanic glass obsidian, was used by many Stone Age societies across the globe for what?
A: The production of sharp cutting tools and, due to its limited source areas, was extensively traded.

But in general, archaeological evidence suggests that the first true glass was made where?
A: In coastal north Syria, Mesopotamia or ancient Egypt.

The earliest known glass objects, of the mid third millennium BCE, were what?
A: Beads, perhaps initially created as accidental by-products of metal-working (slags) or during the production of faience, a pre-glass vitreous material made by a process similar to glazing.

The term glass developed in the late what?
A: Roman Empire.

It was in the Roman glassmaking center at Trier, now in modern Germany, that the late-Latin term glesum originated, probably from what?
A: A Germanic word for a transparent, lustrous substance.

Glass objects have been recovered across the Roman Empire in what contexts?
A: Domestic, funerary, and industrial contexts.

From the 10th-century onwards, glass was employed in what?
A: Stained glass windows of churches and cathedrals.