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Glass is a
Explanation
Glass is scientifically defined as a non-crystalline amorphous solid. Unlike crystalline solids, such as quartz, which possess a periodic and well-ordered atomic lattice, glass lacks long-range order and exhibits a disordered, random atomic arrangement. While its structure shares characteristics with supercooled liquids, glass exhibits the mechanical properties of a solid. It is often formed by rapid melt quenching, which prevents crystallization and freezes the disordered configuration into a solid state at the glass transition temperature. Although some historical debates describe glass as a 'supercooled liquid' due to its slow relaxation and lack of a sharp melting point, modern material science classifies it as an amorphous solid because it maintains a definite shape and volume under standard conditions [2]. It is not a colloid, as it is a single-phase condensed state rather than a mixture of discrete particles [2].
Sources
- [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10875679/