cleverlymadeup said:
AndiGravity said:
The trouble is that glass doesn't just exist as an amorphous solid. It can be an amorphous liquid, too, and the glass transition phase isn't properly considered to be either of those. To further complicate matters, at least when it comes to "glass glass" the transition phase is not clearly defined and is dependent on physical factors outside the material in question.
any matter won't always be in one state, look at water it's both a solid and a liquid and goes thru that change a lot, i guess by your logic we can't classify water as a solid or a liquid
Twitch.
While it's true on a technical level you can't classify an entire material as a solid, liquid, or gas so long as it can exist in more than one state, for most forms of matter it's easy to tell what phase any given portion we happen to be examining exists in at the time, and here's why:
In much the same way osmosis does, kinetic energy moves passively from areas of greater concentration to areas of lower concentration until the total concentration of kinetic energy in any given system is constant for all objects contained in the system, and will be expressed as heat given off or absorbed. Warm objects will cool off as they shed heat into their surroundings, while cool objects will warm up as they absorb heat from their surroundings.
As objects gain or shed sufficient kinetic energy, they will transition from one phase of matter to another. Like most matter, water is a crystalline solid in its frozen state, and goes through a first order transition phase, during which the transition always occurs at a fixed temperature and at a fixed rate, both of which are based on the physical properties of the water itself. The only environmental factor which influences the speed of this transition is the amount of kinetic energy available for the water to absorb from the environment, or lack thereof, and that can be used predictably. Once we know the amount of kinetic energy available, we can calculate the rate of transition from one state of matter to another based on what we know of the physical properties of water.
Further, since it is a first order transition phase, the transition phase for water is virtually instantaneous. There isn't a transitory state so much as there is merely a transitory point. Once water molecules absorb the kinetic energy necessary to convert from solid to liquid (or lose enough to convert from liquid to solid) they do so immediately and spend no time in a state between the two. For this reason, first order transition phases are sometimes referred to as mixed-phase systems, because the matter in question does not wait for the entire object it's a part of to absorb sufficient kinetic energy before it phases from one to another. As each molecule absorbs or sheds sufficient energy, it immediately transitions, which is why you can watch a block of ice melt one drip at a time or watch a pot of water boil away over the course of time. It is also why we can definitively state whether or not the water we are looking at exists in a solid, liquid, or gaseous state.
GLASS DOES NOT BEHAVE THIS WAY.
The whole crux of the debate rests on the fact that glass does not behave like other common forms of matter and exist in one clearly defined state or another, such as water does, but rather exists in an indeterminate continuum state which simultaneously exhibits varying degrees of the properties of both liquids and solids.
In any case, as I noted previously, it does not matter on most practical levels what technical phase of matter the glass is in. The functional and expedient approach is to simply assume you're dealing with a fragile solid and treat it accordingly.
