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Vitrification (from Latin vitrum 'glass', via French vitrifier) is the full or partial transformation of a substance into a glass, [1] that is to say, a non-crystalline or amorphous solid. Glasses differ from liquids structurally and glasses possess a higher degree of connectivity with the same Hausdorff dimensionality of bonds as crystals: dim ...
Vitrified sand is a type of natural glass, contrasted with manufactured glass in which soda ash or potash are added to lower the melting point. Pure quartz melts at 1,650 °C (3,002 °F). There are several natural processes that produce more or less melted sand and one man-made form: Fulgurite is sand fused by a lightning bolt hitting sand.
A sand grain of volcanic glass under the petrographic microscope. Its amorphous nature makes it disappear in cross-polarized light (bottom frame). The scale box is in millimeters. Volcanic glass is the amorphous (uncrystallized) product of rapidly cooling magma.
Trinitite, also known as atomsite or Alamogordo glass, [1] [2] is the glassy residue left on the desert floor after the plutonium-based Trinity nuclear bomb test on July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico.
Typical broken fulgurite sections. Fulgurites (from Latin fulgur 'lightning' and -ite), commonly called "fossilized lightning", are natural tubes, clumps, or masses of sintered, vitrified, or fused soil, sand, rock, organic debris and other sediments that sometimes form when lightning discharges into ground.
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"Beach glass" comes from fresh water and is often less frosted in appearance than sea glass. Sea glass takes 20–40 years, and sometimes as much as 100–200 years, to acquire its characteristic texture and shape. [2] It is also colloquially referred to as drift glass from the longshore drift process that forms the smooth edges.