Glass is a non-crystalline solid that is often transparent, brittle and chemically inert. It has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics.
Laboratory glassware refers to a variety of equipment used in scientific work, and traditionally made of glass. Glass can be blown, bent, cut, molded, and formed into many sizes and shapes, and is therefore common in chemistry, biology, and analytical laboratories. Many laboratories have training programs to demonstrate how glassware is used and to alert first–time users to the safety hazards involved with using glassware.
A Florence flask/boiling flask is a type of flask used as an item of laboratory glassware and is named after the city Florence. It is used as a container to hold liquids. A Florence flask has a round body, a long neck, and often a flat bottom. It is designed for uniform heating, boiling, distillation and ease of swirling; it is produced in a number of different glass thicknesses to stand different types of use. They are often made of borosilicate glass for heat and chemical resistance. Traditional Florence flasks typically do not have a ground glass joint on their rather longer necks, but typically have a slight lip or flange around the tip of the neck. The common volume for a Florence flask is 1 litre.
A vacuum flask is an insulating storage vessel that greatly lengthens the time over which its contents remain hotter or cooler than the flask's surroundings. Invented by Sir James Dewar in 1892, the vacuum flask consists of two flasks, placed one within the other and joined at the neck. The gap between the two flasks is partially evacuated of air, creating a near-vacuum which significantly reduces heat transfer by conduction or convection. When used to hold cold liquids, this also virtually eliminates condensation on the outside of the flask.
Pyrex is a brand introduced by Corning Inc. in 1915 for a line of clear, low-thermal-expansion borosilicate glass used for laboratory glassware and kitchenware. It was later expanded in the 1930s to include kitchenware products made of soda–lime glass and other materials.
A stopper is a cylindrical or conical closure used to seal a container, such as a bottle, tube or barrel. Unlike a lid or bottle cap, which encloses a container from the outside without displacing the inner volume, a bung is partially or wholly inserted inside the container to act as a seal. Synonyms are bung and cork. A bung can be defined as "a plug or closure used to close an opening in a drum or barrel. It is called a plug when referring to a steel drum closure."
A hot plate or hotplate is a portable self-contained tabletop small appliance cooktop that features one or more electric heating elements or gas burners. A hot plate can be used as a stand-alone appliance, but is often used as a substitute for one of the burners from an oven range or a kitchen stove. Hot plates are often used for food preparation, generally in locations where a full kitchen stove would not be convenient or practical. They can also be used as a heat source in laboratories. A hot plate can have a flat surface or round surface. Hot plates can be used for traveling or in areas without electricity.
Lampworking is a type of glasswork in which a torch or lamp is used to melt the glass. Once in a molten state, the glass is formed by blowing and shaping with tools and hand movements. It is also known as flameworking or torchworking, as the modern practice no longer uses oil-fueled lamps. Although lack of a precise definition for lampworking makes it difficult to determine when this technique was first developed, the earliest verifiable lampworked glass is probably a collection of beads thought to date to the fifth century BCE. Lampworking became widely practiced in Murano, Italy in the 14th century. As early as the 17th century, itinerant glassworkers demonstrated lampworking to the public. In the mid-19th century lampwork technique was extended to the production of paperweights, primarily in France, where it became a popular art form, still collected today. Lampworking differs from glassblowing in that glassblowing uses a furnace as the primary heat source, although torches are also used.
Borosilicate glass is a type of glass with silica and boron trioxide as the main glass-forming constituents. Borosilicate glasses are known for having very low coefficients of thermal expansion, making them more resistant to thermal shock than any other common glass. Such glass is subjected to less thermal stress and can withstand temperature differentials without fracturing of about 165 °C (300 °F). It is commonly used for the construction of reagent bottles and flasks, as well as lighting, electronics, and cookware.
Laboratory flasks are vessels or containers that fall into the category of laboratory equipment known as glassware. In laboratory and other scientific settings, they are usually referred to simply as flasks. Flasks come in a number of shapes and a wide range of sizes, but a common distinguishing aspect in their shapes is a wider vessel "body" and one narrower tubular sections at the top called necks which have an opening at the top. Laboratory flask sizes are specified by the volume they can hold, typically in metric units such as milliliters or liters. Laboratory flasks have traditionally been made of glass, but can also be made of plastic.
Glass tubes are mainly cylindrical hollow-wares. Their special shape combined with the huge variety of glass types, allows the use of glass tubing in many applications. For example, laboratory glassware, lighting applications, solar thermal systems and pharmaceutical packaging to name the largest.
Schott AG is a German multinational glass company specializing in the manufacture of glass and glass-ceramics. Headquartered in Mainz, Germany, it is owned by the Carl Zeiss Foundation. The company's founder and namesake, Otto Schott, is credited with the invention of borosilicate glass.
Friedrich Otto Schott (1851–1935) was a German chemist, glass technologist, and the inventor of borosilicate glass. Schott systematically investigated the relationship between the chemical composition of the glass and its properties. In this way, he solved fundamental problems in glass properties, identifying compositions with optical properties that approach the theoretical limit. Schott's findings were a major advance in the optics for microscopy and optical astronomy. His work has been described as "a watershed in the history of glass composition".
Round-bottom flasks are types of flasks having spherical bottoms used as laboratory glassware, mostly for chemical or biochemical work. They are typically made of glass for chemical inertness; and in modern days, they are usually made of heat-resistant borosilicate glass. There is at least one tubular section known as the neck with an opening at the tip. Two- or three-necked flasks are common as well. Round bottom flasks come in many sizes, from 5 mL to 20 L, with the sizes usually inscribed on the glass. In pilot plants even larger flasks are encountered.
Ground glass joints are used in laboratories to quickly and easily fit leak-tight apparatus together from interchangeable commonly available parts. For example, a round bottom flask, Liebig condenser, and oil bubbler with ground glass joints may be rapidly fitted together to reflux a reaction mixture. This is a large improvement compared with older methods of custom-made glassware, which was time-consuming and expensive, or the use of less chemical resistant and heat resistant corks or rubber bungs and glass tubes as joints, which took time to prepare as well.
An eye dropper, also called Pasteur pipette or simply dropper, is a device used to transfer small quantities of liquids. They are used in the laboratory and also to dispense small amounts of liquid medicines. A very common use was to dispense eye drops into the eye. The commonly recognized form is a glass tube tapered to a narrow point and fitted with a rubber bulb at the top, although many styles of both plastic and glass droppers exist. The combination of the pipette and rubber bulb has also been referred to as a teat pipette. The Pasteur pipette name is from the French scientist Louis Pasteur, who used a variant of them extensively during his research. In the past, there was no equipment to transfer a chemical solution without exposing it to the external environment. The hygiene and purity of chemical compounds is necessary for the expected result of each experiment. The eye dropper, both glass and plastic types, can be sterilized and plugged with a rubber bulb at the open end of the pipette preventing any contamination from the atmosphere. Generally, they are considered cheap enough to be disposable, however, so long as the glass point is not chipped, the eye dropper may be washed and reused indefinitely.
Zerodur, a registered trademark of Schott AG, is a lithium-aluminosilicate glass-ceramic produced by Schott AG since 1968. It has been used for a number of very large telescope mirrors including GTC, Keck I, Keck II, and SOFIA, as well as some smaller telescopes. With its very low coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) it can be used to produce mirrors that retain acceptable figures in extremely cold environments such as deep space. Although it has advantages for applications requiring a coefficient of thermal expansion less than that of borosilicate glass, it remains very expensive as compared to borosilicate. The tight tolerance on CTE, ±0.007×10−6 K−1, allows for its use in high-precision applications.
SCHOTT AG Site Mitterteich in Mitterteich, Germany is one of the leading manufacturers of glass tubing. With more than 1000 employees, it is one of the largest employers in the Tirschenreuth district as well as in the whole Northern Upper Palatine. The Mitterteich site is the largest location of the Business Segment Tubing of Schott AG. Other locations are in Mainz, Germany, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and Vadodara, India.
Laboratory drying rack is a pegboard for hanging and draining glassware in a laboratory. It is available in different varieties and sizes. It can be used for different materials of glassware in the laboratory room such as funnels, pipettes, mixing balls, slides, bottle stoppers, tubing and so on. In addition to that, the pegs on the drying rack are easily removable and replaceable in order to maintain the cleaning of the lab racks to avoid contamination with other apparatus used on the same rack. Any common laboratory needs to have at least two or three drying racks per lab.
Jena glass is a shock- and heat-resistant glass used in scientific and technological applications, especially in chemistry.
