I wanted to clear everything up so I went to the Acers website and looked up an array of sources on glass fundamentals. I then went over to Lehigh’s library and looked up all they had there. I didn’t use any web sources since they are dubious at best. I decided to make a tally of all the sources for and against glass as solid or liquid. It started out as I expected. All clearly stating right off that glass was a solid. Then I ran into a very well known source that in the first sentence of the book claimed glass was solid, then in the first paragraph of the second chapter claimed it was liquid quite clearly. I continued on and found a book that directly addressed the debate at hand. It is near the top of the list as far as credibility and is referenced quite often. The first 25 pages were about the history of glass. Then it came upon the debate and resolution which I will type here. The text is “Properties of Glass” By Morley 1959. the end of this is the direct answer.
“Discussion of the definition of glass usually centers around whether at ordinary temperatures glass is an undercooled liquid or an amorphous solid which places the emphasis on the definition of liquid and solid, rather than on the properties of the substance to be defined. The chief difficulty in connection with the definition not only of glass, but also of liquid and of solid is that the terms used either are themselves not well defined or are commonly used with a much looser meaning than is allowable for the purpose of definition. The necessity for precision of meaning in scientific discussion results in one of two evils: either a word commonly used in everyday speech is assigned a strange and rigid meaning, or even worse a new word is coined.
Glass is now manifestly solid, in the usual sense of the term. The definition of solid, however, is not easy. The fact that a substance is solid to the touch is not a sufficient criterion; and the more closely one inquires into the properties characteristic of solid, the more one is forced to depart from the popular conception and resort to greater and greater abstraction. In scientific discussion, moreover, solid has two different and unrelated meanings.
In the first of these meanings, solid is spoken of as one of the three contrasting states of matter, solid, liquid, and gaseous. Each of these states, usually is capable of precise delimitation in respect to the others; and the relation between these states, in both simple and complex systems, is the subject-matter included under the study of phase equilibrium. In the development of that subject, it may have been unfortunate that new terms, which were not commonplaces of everyday speech, were not adopted in place of “solid” and “liquid” with their many irrelevant connotations. To attempt to change the vocabulary of the subject now would be Quixotic. The mere substitution of the term “crystalline” for solid would not help the nonspecialist, for to him “crystalline” would mean only clear and limpid, e.g., the crystalline sky! To be sure, most people rarely come into contact with any solid liquid transition except ice water, and here there is no confusion between the two completely unrelated concepts. But considered as a state of matter, “solid” means “crystalline,” a phase characterized by the atoms being fixed in a , regularly repeated, geometrical as contrasted with the haphazard arrangement of the liquid phase.
When a crystalline solid is heated to its melting point, it changes to a liquid, or to a mixture of liquid and a different crystalline solid; and on cooling the reverse phase changes take place. The materials which always have been called glasses are characterized by the property that when melted at high temperatures and cooled, they do not devitrify, that is, they do not undergo the discontinuous change into the stable aggregate of crystalline phases which equilibrium would require. At high temperatures during melting they are ordinary liquids, and like other liquids, will flow under the influence of gravity or other small force. At the temperatures at which they should freeze or begin to crystallize, the glasses are viscous liquids, and it is largely because of their great viscosity that glasses can be cooled through their freezing points without devitrification. They then become “undercooled liquids.” As undercooling is continued to ordinary temperature, the glasses become increasingly viscous. The increase in viscosity with decreasing temperature is a continuous process from the liquid above the melting or freezing point to the rigid glass at ordinary temperatures; and from the freezing point to ordinary temperatures, the material remains an undercooled liquid with respect to the process of crystallization. Glass is in a condition which is analogous to, and continuous with, the liquid state, but which , as the result of having been cooled from a fused condition, is characterized by so high a viscosity as to be for all practical purposes rigid. It is a solid, but not in the sense of being in the “solid” or “crystalline” state.”
As time progressed since this publication, amorphous solids have become more and more commonplace, and are generally accepted as solids in scientific community. As I mentioned in a previous post quoting Barsoum, that investigations with x- ray diffractometers confirm that glass is solid. Modern scientific ceramics papers no longer address the issue, as ceramists are essentially undivided on the issue as far as I know. At any rate, if you are still reading, and still don’t believe me, then that is o.k. You are at least informed on the issue.
-gauss