the most important material in science
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 ธ.ค. 2024
- Did you guess? Let me know in the comments below if you were correct!
Also apologies saying nitrogen instead of potassium a bunch of times. May the chemistry gods forgive me.
The most important material in science is glass. This is a video about the history of glass. Glass is important. Glass is complicated. Professional scientific glass blowers are the coolest people in the world. And a little discussion on art versus science.
Some links:
MIT Newton Prism explainer video: • Newton's Prism Experiment
The nature of glass remains anything but clear: web.archive.or...
Glassy physics seminar by Prof. Janssen
• CFTC seminar: Glassy p...
Ah, darn. I thought you were going to say the gauge block. Also, not to be pedantic, but those are bi-convex and bi-concave lenses. not that, that distinction matters within the scope of this video...
Pinning this comment because I think my channel might exclusively be for pedants.
Also thanks for telling me about gauge blocks. I hadn’t heard of them and now I’m like ten wiki pages in. Going to have to buy a set and add it to my collection!
Jo Blocks actually
Gauge blocks like what Adam Savage is obsessed with? I think maybe.
A gauge block isn't a material, it's an object. You can make one out of glass if you want.
You nerd
As a chemist, I’d add that glass is chemically tough. Very little damages glassware chemically or contaminates whatever you’re cooking up. Also the same vessel can be used over a huge temperature and pressure range. A careful person can repair minor fractures with just a torch. I had a lucky flask when I was a grad student. I loved that little 100-mL round-bottom flask.
borosilicate glass in particular... But if you were around a few hundred years ago, the ingredients and process wouldn't have been good enough for chemists (alchemists at that time probs) to even count on their glassware being unreactive
It’s an inert, amorphous solid.
I agree. The chemical stability, durability, and optical transparency of glass is incredibly useful
I would not recommend storing HF acid in glass. It is one of the few that will eat it for lunch 😋
I ~had~ a lucky flask. Haven't we all. I'm afraid to ask what happened to the poor little feller.
This has quickly become my new favorite channel. Nothing like a brilliant person ranting passionately about nerdy topics that they're interested in. I also do this, but my only audience is my poor wife (who is actually a scientist, I'm just an engineer) who patiently listens to my meandering, galaxy-brain takes.
I'm a lurker so mostly just read. DO NOT! I REPEAT. DO. NOT. Cut out the moments where you think in real time! In writing (I write) we don't have the luxury to give a glimpse of us thinking in real time unless we try and sound authentic to how we actually think in real time but risk sounding corny. I think that because it's video it's quirky and cute! Keep it going!
I know, it's like she's my best friend, I love how she thinks. Also, to support her on art vs science. It is offensive to any human being to say that they cannot attend a science class and later that day attend a music class. Do they think that a person cannot handle that? What, am I supposed to only walk around on my right foot? (only doing one thing)
Seriously, I’m absolutely floored at the level of engaging communication without a strict script. Like I love how - many minutes after moving on from the topic of spectacles - she remembered another fact about them and excitedly shared. These things make the information more memorable. Also, the part at 48:00 where she got lost thinking about the numbers which was basically of no importance to the topic.. that had me cracking up so hard and I’m so glad it’s in there.
I wouldn’t even want quick, structured edits with occasionally quirkiness, I’m absolutely in love the raw footage, “thinking aloud” and all.
Okay I thought I was the only one who felt like this (I know I wasn't actually but yall know what I mean lol). Anyways I say we just do it bc literally why not? like when I stop and remember corniness isn't real and if it was everyone is unbearably corny lmaoooo so why can't I be too?
I need the no-clipping. I did Physics in school then went into teaching english overseas. Unlike spherical bastard laowai, I did good. The price I pay is now nobody makes any sense. Probably they never did but when I watch this, I feel like I am getting repatriated.
I agree with your sentiment . . . until, ". . . and cute!" That's a word, a phrase, I wouldn't use. Yes, keep it going!
In terms of your archetypes, the med school I went to had:
1. The Pharmacology teacher who barely spoke Portuguese and was utterly incomprehensible, even when explaining the most basic concepts.
2. The Geriatrics teacher who would say "Clinical is King" as if you could clinic your way out of a fractured pelvis. He'd always find a way to insert himself into any kind of case.
3. And the Neurophysiology teacher who barely spoke Portuguese and everybody loved. He made his super complicated field actually seem fun and possible to understand. He did kick-ups during his lectures to teach about integration between neural pathways.
I didn't think I'd watch the whole video in one go but here I am wishing my parents were glassblowers.
You can learn how to do glassblowing on your own.
@@takanara7 Glassblowing is an art I find to be really cool and interesting, but will probably never do. Also the thought of accidentally burning myself with molten glass is kind of terrifying.
@@burnttoast111 eh, the scars fade. Eventually. ;) ;)
(But seriously, glassblowing is really quite fun. Would recommend taking a class, if you ever have the opportunity.)
@@DavidLindes Would be cool to make some Prince Rupert's drops...
@@burnttoast111 yeah, that’s the only thing I can think of where glass is rapidly cooled. And indeed, they’re cool. :) I’ve made them. Fun times. :)
This is one of your more relatable videos for me. As a machinist when I hear you talk about the transition of glass I associate that with heating and cooling of metals at different rates to produce different hardness levels. As a designer when I hear you talk about art vs science I think of the work I do. I help design and manufacture microwave comunication equipment. Juno, Maven, and Osiris Rex are some well known projects I have made components for. I often wonder if we're making art or simply doing high tech plumbing.
As SOON as you said the thing about putting a fact in a truth pocket and forgetting about it for a decade, I was like "oh this is going to be about glass being a liquid isn't it", and then I realized that of course glass isn't a liquid!!! I had that in a truth pocket and forgot about it too!
More precise description: Glass 'was' liquid.
@@angrymeowngiand before that it was a collection of solid sand particles 😄
… which in some emergent ways act like liquid 😮
@rbr1170 everything was liquid if you think about it. i think.
A classmate of mine pointed out that we have glass artware from Ancient Egyptian & Roman times and if it were really a liquid then those works of art would be seriously deformed by now
I had this in my truth pocket for a long time, as well. I think I was visiting a German church or something and they mentioned how a lot of people think that, but if you look in these 500 year old windows, you can see it’s upside-down with the thick part at the top, for unknown reasons (but for centuries). My mind was blown, and then I immediately thought “well of course that a crystallin-ish structure is not also a liquid, I guess.”
We had a glassblower right up until 2011 at which point the university fired them at that moment, I broke a very important piece of glassware and set my PhD back half a year since I couldn't get a replacement. I am definitely the second type of scientist and I know a third type, the issue was you get distracted for hours talking about things instead of working. He was co-author on my most successful paper though.
I love watching TH-cam channels at the origin before they go massive
Haha I will believe this “going massive” when I see it. I appreciate your confidence in me though!
@@acollierastro you best start believing in going massive stories; you're in one
I also attended the University of Kentucky for grad school and just finished my PhD (in engineering). I've had the pleasure of meeting Jeff Babbitt in the chemistry glass shop and it made me so happy to hear you mention him!
it has never crossed my mind how truly omnipresent glass is and how awesome those glassblowers are
it's almost like you were looking right through it the whole time!
(im so sorry)
@@idontwantahandlethoughYeah, makes you reflect about a lot of things that was right in front of you the whole time...
Just watched your video on glass.. one area that you missed is bioactive glass for tissue regeneration. Bioactive glass has interesting and clinically useful characteristics as a scaffold material ( can be in the form of injectable pastes alone or mixed with polymers for added strength !) for bone tissue engineering. Here in Turku there are several companies working in both equine , canine and human health bone repair..Great video.
Turku shoutout! I am also from Turku, but I am studying computer engineering (Digit) instead.
@@vurpo7080 Onnea yliopiston kursseille !
With the clickbait title, I was totally expecting a cop-out answer like "the most important material is actually your intuition!" or "hard work" or "it's the scientists themselves persevering through adversity!", but this was actually really informative. I enjoyed all the meandering twists and turns talking about very relatable instances like overpriced restaurants with the wine glass cups.
1:01:20 "Science is a very creative field" YES, absolutely. I feel this sentiment from the other side. I am an artist, a musician specifically, and the work I do is highly analytical. I don't spend hours practicing for nothing. I am experimenting with my mechanical technique, with the variations in my breath pressure, with the affect that every small variation produces in order to come to an interpretation that is satisfying to me as an artist and follows historical principles of playing which vary vastly between different artistic periods. I have to take a scientific, analytical approach in order to facilitate creativity in my art.
It seems to me that these scientific glassblowers are the mirror image. Glass blowing is creative and artistic, and their mastery of the art (which similarly took countless hours of practice) enables them to be highly specific in the equipment they create with a precision that only comes from deep analysis of their technique.
I really find it demeaning to either person to deny the creative or analytic element of science or of art, respectively. We all have the capacity for both and the work that we do is reflective of that.
EDIT: I hit pause and posted this before Angela got to her point about artists needing to know science. Thank you for bringing that in. My only gripe: while it's a discussion for another time, I don't know where the idea that writing music is doing math came from. I hear it a lot, but they aren't very similar at all, at least to me. The math of music is done by our ears; in a way the composer shapes the calculations our ears do, but writing music is not primarily a mathematical process. Although, it can depend on the style to some degree. Some styles are bound by a lot of formal rules (and their specific exceptions) around intervals and the way beats may be divided while other styles are aleatoric and math may be involved in that aleatoric process.
The math is done by our ears, so it follows that in order for a musician to gain total control over their medium they must learn that math. I personally have found learning the math and physics behind music has greatly improved my composition.
Hi Angela! As someone who recently left academia after finishing a master's in immunology, I found your channel for your accurate descriptions of the flaws of the academic system as it currently functions. I, however, find your physics videos equally fascinating. You do an amazing job of describing complex topics, and making them engaging!
That's really nice! Thanks for watching.
WARNING! Do not attempt to cut a bottle using these instructions. She left out the crucial first step where you score a line around the bottle using a glass cutting tool.
When I read the title of this video I wasn't sure if you meant the most important physical material, or the most important subject matter in Physics. I managed to guess glass a few seconds before you revealed it.
Fun Fact: you can tell if a person is near or far-sighted by looking at the edge of the persons head and comparing how it looks just above or below their glasses, versus where you see the edge of their head thru their glasses. If it's thinner thru their glasses, the lens is concave and they're nearsighted. If their head looks wider thru their glasses, the lens is convex and they're farsighted.
If they wear glasses, that is!
My grandfather, small town physics prof, used a file to create a short horizontal scratch, then looped alcohol soaked string around the room temperature bottle down to the level of the scratch, then set the string on fire. He would buff the sharp edge down using emory paper tacked grit side up to a board.
You can also test your vision with laser speckle against almost any diffusing surface. If the speckle moves the same direction you move your head, farsighted, if opposite, nearsighted. Works well with glasses on or off, since the speckle is generated on the retina.
it's funny you say that. I saw the title and considered a few options and before i even knew it the word was already falling out of my mouth. "glass". I sounded offended, like how could any other material even come close. centuries of telescopes, microscopes, beakers, and flasks. for versatility, longevity, and time spent at the top there can be no other contender for the GOAT
Oh so she is slightly nearsighted?
you dont need to score it. just heat it differentially using a straight, hot surface eg a boiling surface or burning string. get gud
When I was a young boy, I had a dog named Blue. One day, I came home from school and my parents told me Blue went to go live on a farm a couple towns away. I was sad, but I was happy for Blue. When I turned 16 or 17, I realized that that's what parents say to a kid when their dog was hit by a car. I didn't mention it, I understood. When I was almost 30, I brought up Blue with my folks, figuring they'd come clean about what had obviously happened. They broke out laughing. Blue had really and truly been given to a farmer we knew, because she wasn't getting along with our other dog. Blue was a very, very good girl. She still might be, some dogs live to 35-40 years old... right?
A friend of mine had a cat that also went to a farm. Someone in the neighborhood was moving and the cat got curious and wound up in the UHAUL. They happened to be moving to a farm, and someone saw the cat bolt out after they opened the door and it ended up living on the farm XD
@@cmmartti shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up shut up
they really doubled-down huh? damn thats spineless
She did NOT go to a farm 😭😭🥺
Then why did they never bring you to visit? 🤔
I really like one. The scientific glassblowers you described are likely old souls and artisans. Old soul artisans. You also talked a little bit about the war on creativity. How creativity has been under siege in many fields such as science and engineering for a hundred years or more. How creative people create many wonderful things but rarely profit from them. How mostly non-creative people have come to control the fields of science, engineering, art, film, theatre, literature, publishing, dance, architecture, food production, etc. The people who control these fields tend to be motived by money rather than making beautiful and useful things or knowledge that help people. How if a project or endeavor in one of these fields isn't likely to lead to large profits, it often just doesn't happen. How most creative people have little choice but to work in mindless, repetitive, low paying jobs that are soul crushing to a creative person. When the weather allows, I go to weekend art shows and street fairs and often find the most amazing and inspiring things made by so many brilliant and creative people. I work in engineering, in both research and in product development, and it truly is a creative field, but talk of creativity is discouraged except when discussing the filing of patents.
"polymer and materials" phd chemist here, and you nailed this whole thing real well. And also shout outs to my departments own glass blower dude who was, yes, cool and so helpful and so calm and kind. And they gave him an *above ground* office for it!
Sorry, saw the username, had to comment. Just another juggler watching Angela geeking out and getting salty about something. Nothing to say but 'Hi!'.
This kind of no-bullshit iconoclasm is desperately needed in popular science education/edutainment. Holy shit your channel is SO GOOD!
I knew something was up with these string theory evangelists. Goddamn it's so satisfying to finally see someone in their general field of study give them the hard side-eye that they deserve.
Dr. Collier please keep this up, you're doing something really interesting here and I am hyped to see your channel grow!
🎉
So glad you found something to be outraged by at the end.
Great story :)
When you asked the question at the beginning, my first thought was “glass”, but figured there must be a more “interesting” answer. It turns out glass *is* more interesting than I realized.
You are capable of producing an hour long video about glass that is not boring for a second. It's almost like you are an artist 😁
One hypothesis I’ve heard for the origin of glass is massive bonfires on the beach or in the desert, because humans have been doing that since antiquity, and the heat in a massive fire like that will get hot enough to melt the sand, and once someone saw that it made this weird material, they tried to recreate those conditions in a more controlled fashion, thus giving birth to glassware.
yes, just like iron and ceramics, I personally believe that glass was discovered independently thousands of times by groups of people just shooting the shit around a fire.
@@tissuepaper9962 So Beavis and Butthead invented glass because they wanted to make an even bigger fire? Checks out
I still wonder how they invented cheese, or how they realized extremely spoiled milk was edible.
@@johnclawed i always thought it must have been an accident at first, like, someone was storing their milk, left it too long, it separated and started solidifying, then when they found it, they were prolly like, "hey, that looks weird, but it doesn't actually smell bad." and tried to eat some, but that is 100% inference, i've never looked into the origins of cheese before.
lmao, after looking it up, that is almost exactly how they think cheese originated.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_cheese
@@johnclawed if that milk was your only food for the week then you'd damn well better eat it even if it looks weird.
have to say I’ve been watching your videos for a little while now and I really appreciate your simple straight forward method of science communication, most videos I cannot sit through one hour of anything yet somehow I can keep listening to you talk about these topics to no end , thank you
I got a Video of yours reccomended by the algorithm and I have watched all of them now whenever I hade some time to kill.
This Channel is such a gem.
Your Videos are so brilliantly put together, informative and perfectly paced, I'm not getting bored during an hour long Video, wow!
Thank you for your effort.
This is so kind of you to say! Thanks for watching.
Wait this was an hour?? I thought it was 30 mins. No wonder I felt like it was so dense.
This video was so full of optimism it makes me feel good about the world. I had no idea universities had glass blowers like Mike Souza on staff to make highly-specific glass equipment. That is amazing! Glass is so cool!!
Love your content. Keep it coming. Didn't know a single thing about glass blowing before this.
Thanks for watching!
16:21 i LOVE glass rod experiments and other conduction experiments. it's so mind blowing to me.
As an artist I can tell you creativity is not the most important skill in art making. (Its aesthetic observation and perseverance) And as a layperson interested in science I am amazed by the creativity needed for developing a hypothesis and designing a good experiment.
I can't help but think that the distinction between aesthetic observation and creativity is extremely pedantic.
@@d007ization Study art. Then try to do something artistic. By then, the distinction will be blindingly obvious to you. Otherwise, you're just thinking about artistic observation and creativity, so it's easy to be pedantic doing that.
One can conflate creative/artistic work with craft work. For a layman they are very similar. But for someone in the trade they are not.
@@karlramberg But both art and craft require great skill and attention to detail. The skills are very close. The difference lies in the purpose. In art, that's more in the beauty of the creation, and the response it evokes in those who see it. In craft, it's in the skill itself, the admiration that that skill evokes, and in the utility of the thing created.
It's worth knowing that art is not always viewed by the artist the same way as the layman often views it today. J. S. Bach, the great musician, viewed music as a craft, as did most people of his time. And indeed, he wrote music that is as admirable in skill as any craftsman might make, and as rewarding in emotional satisfaction as any later "more emotional" music. That view of emotion peaked in the 19th century, but we haven't quite left it behind yet. And the great pleasure in the utility of a craftsman's work in past centuries is something that is all too often ignored and unlooked for today. In both, we have lost great riches, in our own disregard of the things, and of the work well done. We do not look carefully these days.
What is an artist without creativity? Even a forger needs creativity in order to make a replica. Sure the product itself will look like the original but the process of making that required creativity. Only an AI does not require (or more precisely, does not yet possess creativity). My guess is that you can only say that because you have the innate talent. And yes, even for talented people 'creativity' seems to be illusive but what is often missing is simply inspiration. All artist who create are by definition are creative people. You can produce what can be considered art without creativity. That is also why photography took time to be accepted as art because the production process was attributed more to the already created "camera" (which is a creative application of glass) and already existing 'subjects'. However, that creativity is often hindered by lack of inspiration to begin or finish. Yes, just at both ends. Artist (and scientist) will just enter flow state in the middle. And as an uneducated artist (i.e. did not go to Uni to take an art degree), creativity is not a requirement but a given for any artistic endeavor.
As much as I love old photo plates, especially ones used in astronomy, I am glad you will get the credit for any discoveries you make. The silver lining.
Do you have X-ray laser money is officially my new favorite quote. Literally it’s so much fun to watch someone just nerd out over a topic they love and know a lot about
I have been surfing TH-cam videos for years and I must say your presentations are one of a kind, masterclass doesn't even do justice. Thank you for sharing
My godfather was an artist who worked with many materials, making art from metals to glass and rock. We had one of his sculptures made from pieces of raw glass chunks bonded with a metal frame. It never really got much natural light in the position it was in on the bookshelf. I mentioned it to him one day when he was older, and he told me (almost made me promise) to move it into a window space. The difference was spectacular. It had a very raw beauty that could not be predicted easily. You have reaffirmed my beauty in glass and the people that work with it. Stained glass panels were also a work he entertained although this ugly? piece of glass shards and metal (silver) framing captivated me more than his more successful works. I am probably biased from my experience and relation to him.
It's astounding that in 2008 science was still struggling to understand glass. Maybe also even as late as right now. It reminds me that science has also still not determined the exact melting temperature of butter. A stick of butter goes from frozen solid to liquid, passing through a near infinite number of incremental softened states, but none are the definitive melting temp. If I would find a way to insert "mode coupling" into my butter dilemma, that would be cool. By the way, there is a part of me that loves it when someone disagrees "violently" over the the nature of glass. "Hezekiah, fetch my dueling pistols!" I love that you said, "Glass remembers how you made it." You combine science with poetry, Angela, prolly without conscious thought. This scientifically-informed stream of consciousness, never settling for less that strict accuracy, is one reason why your videos are so incredibly interesting.
I too found out about my astigmatism in public. I was in a 100 person psych 101 lecture where the projector got bumped and went out of focus. While the professor was trying to adjust the projector, everyone was helping by saying, not clear, not yet, etc. After they adjusted it, to what must have been focused, I said, its still blurry! Everyone looked at me like I was the annoying kid who says present during roll call. I will never forget that embarrassment.
I think you might be surprised to know that there are a large number of different types of ice (modern phase diagrams for water are insanely complex), and that you can get specific types of ice by freezing your water under different conditions! Also, this is still an active area of research today!
Yes this! She didn't pick the "boring" pick very well :D
One of the strangest naturally occurring ice types I remember watching a video about is called "frazil ice". There are a few places where huge quantities of this form in winter, since as you correctly alluded to, it requires some specific conditions to form. There are a few places where a small river flows over a tall (at least a hundred metres) cliff to form a waterfall, but also with a slight overhang and the exposed vertical rock face is relatively smooth, with hardly any jagged outcropping at all. So most of the water falls through the air, without clinging to the exposed rock. This also requires significantly sub-zero temperatures (at least 10 degrees C below freezing point), and enough wind speed to break up the falling water into separate drops.
This combination enables the water drops to fall far enough through the very cold air to reach sufficient velocity to stretch out the drops as they fall and freeze, so the majority of it freezes into thin needle shapes. Imagine a pile of hair clippings you might get when sweeping the floor in a barbers shop, after a bunch of people with fairly short and straight hair had been in there to get their hair trimmed. Then imagine that this pile of short, straight hair trimmings is actually ice. This is what frazil ice looks like. Finally, imagine that there are many tons of it piled up at the bottom of the cliff, and some of it flows further downhill through a forest of pine trees (carried by liquid water from the small percentage of the waterfall that didn't freeze), so from a distance it can look like thick snowdrifts. That is what you get in winter time in the few places where frazil ice forms naturally.
Fantastic video! Yeah, so many things we have all over the place that were marvels and miracles at one point in time are now things so commonly used that we take them for granted.
Oh, and super props to that telescope operator that told you that you had astigmatism. Most people when they see someone fail at something tend to just automatically assume that it is because they are a bad worker or something, but this person knew that this wasn't the case and figured out what the issue was for you. Respect.
I know this is an old video but I've just discovered your channel recently... I've got to say I absolutely love the bits where you go off on a big tangent about stuff like the scientist archetype and "If your theory is indecipherable is it advancing the knowledge... does it matter if it's a correct theory or not if nobody can read it!?".
I guessed glass! I spent over ten years working on two dark matter experiments where glass plays a critical role - first, one where we used cryogenic PMTs, so glass bulbs that had to withstand liquid argon temperatures, and then an experiment where our active volume was contained between two huge glass jars.
(Also, exoplanets ARE cool!)
This sounds cool. Can you link me an arxiv paper?
Nailed it! As a former glass scientist I'd add that glass was the first material made by humans, right after the domain of fire, and, yet no one knows what is a glass. Thanks!
PS: dark matter is a glass!
Please explain how dark matter is a glass, given we know next to nothing about it and also whether or not it exists?
@@minerscale I think that was a joke :)
@@ericy4522 damn it you're obviously right, I was getting ready to listen to some awesome crackpot theory about how dark matter is actually an amorphous solid.
I was today years old when i got over hating glass.
Glass has always sort of hated me. I have a few scars left over to prove it. ;)
Thank you for an excellent video.
I love your channel. No flashy cuts or animations or a perfected script, just you and your enthusiasm.
Super interesting video! Think the details on the thicker glass might be a bit off though.
IIRC, the old glass which is thicker at one side predates the bessemer process (floating the molten glass on metal to create an even sheet, like you said). Instead you'd take a blob of glass and spin it so that it stretches into a a disk, but that isn't perfect (more glass in the centre than the outside) so each piece cut out of the disk has a thicker edge on the inner side.
These are brilliant videos, but her knowledge of technology in the olden times is sometimes anachronistic, sometimes a little bit off. Like the galaxy photo she had wasn't a "photographic plate" - those are always negative images, what she had was a glass positive print.
I believe I saw the same fact stated somewhere (thickness variation caused by glass blowing and spinning it into a disk, not the molten metal process.) I think it was at the Corning Museum of Glass in New York state. I really like that place.
as an artist who's always been super into science I love this video so much. IT doesn't have to be "aart versus science" - it can and should be "art AND science" :)
I agree so much I did a degree in both
Academic glassblowers are amazing. I've seen a couple of demos they've done at the University of Ottawa and the kinds of things they can produce just blow my mind. I look at them and just cannot imagine how the apparatus could possibly even exist.
this is so cool.
for one hour I was like: "but where's she going with this? is there a point, at all?" --- but after one hour I was like: "oh no, ALREADY over?"
this, to me, is the true spirit of TH-cam. You're restoring my faith in the intetnet, a place where we can catch a glimpse of someone's out of the ordinary passions, where we can take our time to marvel about the obscure details that make life so full of beauty.
21:46 Watching Angela geek out over old photographic plates is the wholesome content I'm here for.
I really loved this video! My mom is a physicist, and she would mention the glass blowers in her university labs sometimes, but I never knew just how important glass was to science!
this video is sooo cool. as a scientist and an artist I feel like I’m constantly straddling this line and I love how you’re having these realizations too. I’ve always thought the scientific method and the artistic process are the same thing, just different approaches and means to their own ends.
Man... I feel like your videos focus on nothing really, in particular. But they are endlessly entertaining and fascinating. You bounce around from story to fact to observation and I'm here for all of it.
When I was a kid, people still had home projectors and would have their photos processed as slides. You also had these slides in cartridges for presentations. This is where I assumed the PowerPoint slide deck terminology came from.
Yes, carousels of photo slides were sometimes called slide decks. PowerPoint is the digital equivalent of a photo slide show. www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-verizon-us-rvc3&sca_esv=44922cbe319e9a1e&sxsrf=ACQVn08Ikvdb_jFPVGjvqxQxu3RU8Axhxw:1706871988075&q=photo+slide+carousel&tbm=isch&source=lnms&prmd=isvnmbhtz&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjRxprUwYyEAxVPPEQIHfveAPsQ0pQJegQIDRAB&biw=412&bih=759&dpr=2.63#imgrc=B4tFdD-iY-8fsM
Yesterday I saw this, your video; today, in Scientific American 5/23, page 22, by Allison Parshall: "Glass, to a physicist, is a broad category of solid matter. Hard candy can be glass. Same with plastic-- and even spreadable mayonnaise, by some measures. Unlike crystalline structures such as ice, the disordered particles of a liquid transition to glass when they get jammed together so tightly that they can barely move." Just another take on "the most important material in science". Thanks!
4:20 The image you displayed here is actually a sand sculpture by Sandcastlematt. It went viral after some people claimed it was the result of a lightning strike, but it wasn't.
Fun fact, you can flip DSLR lenses backwards and they become macro lenses. Its the same effect.
Telescope takes big thing and projects it to a little area if you look in the correct end. If you look through the other end it takes a small area and projects it on a big one. Telescopes and mircoscopes are the same thing, you just look through the other end
Fuck! I work in polymers, with physics training. The glass transition has been such an interesting phenomena. I personally know an expert in glass transitions, very intense stuff. Oh I also know the person that replaced the retiree at Caltech! You’re absolutely correct about scientific glassblowers being amazing. Also there’s like only a couple hundred of them around.
Everytime I watch one of your videos I'm just sucked into your stories and your tangents and when they're over, I feel like I've learned a whole lot of fantastic random things and am totally satisfied.
All I'll say is this:
Ever since I've decided to apply myself to learning about engineering and physics - and the relevant math, of course - I've also realized that learning glasswork, along with metalurgy and welding, is VITAL to my education.
This just confirms my more-than hunch.
PS I work at a television news station.
Journalists aren't that bright. They're not dumb, but as soon as something comes along that in any way challenges their limited and narrow conventional wisdom, they shirk it off and keep to their own internal script.
That, and also the bosses always have a narrative that they will or will not accept for publication or broadcast.
Our highschool used to have a foundry and I heard chemistry students used to have to learn to blow glass. Now that room is used to administer standardized tests
Im surprized in your history of glass in science portion you didnt mention the effects its had on medical research. The fact glass is easy to get clean, and support a sterile environment is one of the things that just makes it "sciency" for me.
I heard that glass "fact" in a first-year materials science lecture and worried about why I wasn't understanding how it was possible until I stumbled onto an explanation of the "glass myth".
Thank you for the art vs. science discussion.
I have to admit, I never thought about it like that. And you're absolutely right.
I loved sitting with you and watch you nerd about glass.
You're cool.
I just started watching your videos today. This was the fourth one. You love of science is so infectious. Thank you for being you. A new fan.
I’m coming up on 25 and for almost more than half of my life I’ve been fascinated by glass, yet I never once thought to look into what makes it so special. 11/10 vid, #3 in the current marathon through your vids, you are a freaking great explainer. You and Kyle Hill should do something together
Thank you for making videos that focus on the joy of science. It makes me remember why I love it so much!
Angela: "...I collect vintage science equipment because I'm really cool..." I am not going to argue with that assessemnt. In fact, I would say it's a bit of an understatement. Edited to add: I'm pretty sure that if you went to Corning and told them to shut down their plant for a few days to build something for you they probably would. I don't see how they could refuse. In any case, another terrific presentation, which I thoroughly enjoyed, and learned at lot from. More, please.
On the subject of glass flowing as a liquid, I have a story to relate. When I was about 12, so maybe about 1968, I persuaded my father to take me to Yerkes observatory to see the 40 inch refractor there. The tour was led by a postdoc, I suppose from the university of Chicago. I distinctly remember him telling the crowd that they would periodically rotate the 40 inch lens 180 degrees in its cell to compensate for the sag that occurs because glass flows! Maybe he was joking, but for years I also believed this.
lmao my senior chem teacher went on a tangent about glass-blowing, she made great points and argued the same stance that they are as much scientists as any researcher, never knew it was such a big thing. Makes a lot of sense tho
One thing that always comes to mind when hearing about individuals like Mike, we don't really have people that are going to replace them. it feels like a lot of these skills are going to become lost knowledge. that whole sci-fi trope of humans losing the knowledge to build things is really going to happen over the next few generations...
I'm going to be a bit pedantic here and argue we won't lose the knowledge of how to do things, we're going to lose the accumulated experience of how to do things. An example that's becoming relevant in some fields is vacuum tubes. There's a couple things there better for, and working vintage equipment is worth money now. We know how they were made, but actually making them is a problem. The people who used to make them are now retired and its been long enough that they don't remember all the details.
Something similar is like, we have the blueprints for the Saturn V rockets, or the 16inch battleship guns, but that barely helps because the tooling to make those massive machines simply don't exist anymore, and people would have to figure out what they looks like from scratch because the people who made those aren't really around anymore either.
Ironically it becomes less of a headache making a new design altogether.
We DO have people who are going to replace them, but those people are still accumulating all that experience, still learning new tricks. By the time they, too, get to 60, they'll also be super amazing. Right now, they're just the ordinary kind of amazing.
I'm not a scientist at all but your videos are so captivating i just can't stop watching! I love good, passionate science education!
Great video! Don't wanna be that guy but there are around 20 different forms of ice, each with their own ice transition phase. It's a fascinating field of study in its own right. I just thought you'd find that interesting. Edit: Kurt Vonnegut wrote a great SF book about the fantastical properties of the (as yet undiscovered) ice 9. Sadly the real thing didn't live up to his imaginings...
I love how happy and excited you get about the photo plate’s and all this in general we more people like you in the world
just discovered your channel and been loving it!
about the reading stones (~9:20 of the video), i can't help but point out that this has been done! in Umberto Eco's "The name of the rose", we follow a friar, William of Bakersville, and his apprentice, Adso of Melk, who arrive at a monastery in Northern Italy where they are quickly informed that a young monk has died in a strange manner - and set onto an investigation. William is older and a scholar, and so has some trouble reading, and has to use what he describes as some sort of magnifying lens or something like that. it even turns into a subplot and there are scenes where he and the monastery's glassmaker monk discuss it and it is just great. love this book, highly recommend if you haven't already
!!!!
@@acollierastro Yeah, I'm of course just someone who's watched a bunch of your TH-cam videos, but I think The Name of the Rose might be a book you'd be interested in. The book _not_ the movie!
TH-cam ramdomly suggested one of your videos to me and now I`m addicted, can`t stop watching.
Another great video, thank you so much for making these! They are a unique mix of interesting facts, recognizable observations and just fun stuff (or serious stuff but that's cool too). That said, you missed an "olden days" count at 1:06:14 please fix :D
Nooooo! I get so tired of watching them after editing I was hoping I hadn't missed one.
@@acollierastro [HUGS YOUR TIRED EDITOR-BRAIN IN RECOGNITION&SYMPATHY]
Among my favorite memories from school (aside from the smell of the library) are the times we got together in the evening over pizza and beer and discussed what we learned that day. We’re never really sure of what we know until we can explain it to someone else.
From joyfully binging all these videos, I have concluded that Dr. Collier vastly overestimates the kinds of books I pick up at the airport 😂
We turn the photon into an electron and then back into a photon by displaying it on a monitor. That’s kinda amazing honestly.
You mention CMOS image sensors, but generically it's important to realize a huge reason that Silicon won the semiconductor wars (at least from the 70s through 2010)... that it forms glass (Oxide) in very thin uniform and patternable unbroken layers. So glass, again.
What was the other material?
@@Appletank8 Gallium arsenide I believe? Very popular in the 1970s, but going into the 1980s advances in manufacturing made silicon the _vastly_ superior choice (both cheaper and better-performing). Funnily enough, now that we're beginning to reach the limits of silicon, gallium may be making a comeback - we can't be sure what the new mainstream chip material will be, but gallium nitride is a strong candidate.
Germanium was what the first transistors were made of. I don't know why it was superseded by silicon, however. Perhaps a smaller bandgap?
@@jorymilj It just got behind on the treadmill. Starting with good oxide Si development just stayed ahead.GaAs put up a fight, but lost again by just being outrun. There are a lot of SiGe doped transistors in production though.
I used to work for 3 labs doing high pressure chemistry. We use mono crystalline carbon glass. Glass is important. Even when it’s diamond
Damn my guess at the start was understanding *semi-conductors* and being able to use them in creating transistors. This led to much faster & smaller computers that pretty much every STEM field requires now for any sort of analysis. Programming a computer to do the computationally taxing stuff and sampling data points along with finding trends & patterns is a huge help!
But I stand corrected after watching this; and learned to better appreciate glass :)
Nice video!
I thought that too. They're both heavily based in silicon (at least, often, but not necessarily) so that's interesting (and increasingly also a problem).
@1:05:15 deep breath! It's ok (well, it's expected) that journalists don't understand that scientists are creative people... Journalist just need some experience with science to get it, and most of them are on tight deadlines with not enough time to embed with an experimental team, so we need to teach them.
I liked how you described artists would know about science stuff. I watch all manner of science videos, it just holds a very deep interest in me if I said that correctly, and I used to be a paid artist. I remember I used to work in a little studio with 2+ other artists. We sort-of behaved like scientists doing experiments and stuff. One day the other guy who also played bass, he came in with gold leaf saying he's going to experiment with this now. I'm like okay. It isn't experimentation to seek the truth but still to gain knowledge and to understand things.
I was shocked, shocked! that he pulled out the gold leaf, I mean who was paying for that?! 😆 I guess I'm enjoying remembering. It was so small we had to duck around each other. Every inch of the place had paint overspray.
Our glass blower in the UMichigan chem department is the best! He's also in his 70s with like a million years of experience. He keeps a fridge full of drinks and snacks to feed us grad students whenever we stop by to have glassware made.
Really nice video! It's really interesting how nobody learns about materials science lol; there's so much that I take for granted and then I'm like, oh yeah people don't learn that unless they take a super specific college course.
Just to clarify one point about glass vs ceramics--glass (the kind you talk about here) is a subcategory of ceramics. Ceramics are defined by the type of bonding (i.e. ionic and covalent) and glass is defined by not having a crystal structure. The most abundant glass is made of SiO2--so if quartz is a ceramic, so is glass. That said, there are non-ceramic glasses, which can be made of polymers or metals. Bulk metallic glasses (BMGs) have really interesting properties compared to regular metals.
P.S. I do think "glass" as the answer to your question is cheating :) It's such a broad category that it's competition would be "metals" and "plastics," and if those are the 3 options, I'd say metals are the most important material. But I'm a metallurgist so....
P.P.S. In your example with water, actually you'd *definitely* get 2 different kinds of ice. Even if they had the same crystal structure, the grains and dendrite formations would be totally different, so it would not be fair to say they have the same structure. If you went a little colder than your example, you could even get glass water!
The expression of realization at 15:58. Chef's kiss
There's just enough overlap in delivery, sound of voice, and cadence that I *cannot* stop thinking of you as "Physics Jenny Nicholson" and it's KILLING me
The 3 Archetypal Scientists: The Obfuscator, whose work is so complex and in-depth that its meaning becomes obscured; The Streamliner, who over-simplifies complicated subjects to a detrimental extent & in doing so provides the inspiration for the Spherical Cow joke; and The True Genius, a group which is apparently mostly composed of University-employed glassblowers. Awesome video as always!
Also, THANK YOU so much for that rant about the false dichotomy between art/science & creativity/intelligence. I have never been able to adequately articulate why I find this artificial divide between "creative types" and "smart people" so thoroughly infuriating. I'm so grateful and glad that you were able to say it for me.
Found your channel maybe last week, but OMG YES GLASSES ARE THE BEST MOST INTERESTING MATERIAL! Ever since doing a slight dive into the science of Glass (the initial project was on Corning) I have continued to be completely enamored with the stuff! So... When's the video on Sand? :D
I hate sand. It's coarse and rough and gets into everything.
Fascinating review. Minor detail: glass shapes have to be cooled slowly, not quickly.
I use glass to drink water
Thanks for your entertaining and informative videos.
I would like to say thank you for the term “truth pocket”. When my husband and I ever say something of this nature we always add “because I believe things that sound like they are true” 😂 but now we can just say we pulled that one out of our truth pocket 😂 here’s some things I believed until ages that don’t match:
You can’t whistle unless you eat the crust of your bread
Mothers of baby animals can smell you on them and will abandon them if you touch them
Leave the avocado pit in the guac to not turn brown
It goes on like this 😂
To quote Aron Ra, "If you can't show it, you don't know it." As you suggest, it's utterly meaningless to claim knowledge if it can't be shared and doesn't have any demonstrable effect on reality.
Great video. I'm something of a yapper when it comes to my special interests™, and I love watching others talk about their interests and passions.
I did not know astigmatism was a thing, and I'm pretty sure I have it my whole life. I've always seen a lot of streaks around bright objects at night, but I thought everyone saw them. Definitly gonna talk to my doctor about that.
I question whether the streaks I see are astigmatism or the diffraction from my low hanging eyelashes sometimes.
Yeah, I have astigmatism, and my mind was blown when I learnt that not everyone saw them. Definitely a good idea to see an optometrist; I started getting really bad headaches at one point from it, even though I didn't have trouble actually seeing or reading stuff.
I actually guessed correctly! ;) But while I was watching this, I realized 'wait a second, when you think about it, saying "glass" is kind of like saying "metal" or "circuitry."' I always wanted to work with a glassblower when I was in grad school, but as a systems behavioral neurophysiologist, I just didn't have much need for custom glassware. But I did have plenty of need for custom objects, devices, and micro-machines, and novel miniaturized electronics. The high-precision NASA-trained machinists (and a couple of gunsmiths) and electronics engineers I worked with were also fascinating, incredibly intelligent, highly-educated, and really chill (*if* they felt the mutual respect thing happening). Maybe I missed it, but if you haven't and if you have the inclination to do so, I'd love to see similar content on these two other essential scientific 'craftsmen' who make all the cool experiments possible.
It is art. These glassblowers are artisinal, not mass-producers.
"When's the last time you saw someone with a broken screen on a newer phone?" - LOL, I have never seen my son's phone without a broken screen!
I thought you were going to say "PhD students"
23:40 I think the perspective of us no longer seeing actual photons and now we take in our all data via electrons is exactly right and a really great way to put it.
it's awkward to say but I must, you are a very intelligent, confident and beautiful woman and I love listening to you talk about science :) I wish I could talk science with you.
I agree glassblowers are the coolest people ever. I always wanted to do it as a child but never ended up there.