Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 169 "Green Jade"

Iron and steel are highly acclaimed building materials in the later industrialized world, but the humble glass, although so overlooked by us - well, at least easy to "see through" - is equally significant in the history of human development.

One of the first synthetic materials created by humans, glass was created in the cradle of the earliest cities in Mesopotamia sometime in the third millennium BC.

As we all know, glass is made from molten sand, or more precisely, from purified silica (silicon dioxide).

However, simply throwing a handful of sand into a fire will not accomplish anything except possibly putting it out.

The problem is that silica has an extremely high melting point, around 1650 degrees.

This is far beyond the temperature that can be reached in a simple kiln, so simply knowing its main ingredients does not help people actually make glass.

Glass sometimes forms naturally. If you are lucky enough, you may be digging in the desert and find long, hollow, strange tubes formed by molten silica. These tubes often have the intricate shapes of plant roots.

The structures, called siliceous tubulites or frozen lightning, are formed when lightning strikes dry sand. Electricity surges into the ground, generating temperatures high enough to melt the silica grains and fuse them into glass tubes.

Of course, humans generally cannot control the power of lightning, let alone dig pointlessly in the desert to obtain glass.

The history of glassmaking in ancient China can be traced back to three thousand years ago. However, the glass products at that time were mainly lead-barium glass, which is different from the soda-lime glass used in the West.

During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, ancient people began using ceramic crucibles, earthenware cauldrons, or flat clay furnaces to oxidize and roast galena to produce lead. Once the lead oxide formed, it came into contact with the clay inside the crucible or cauldron. Once the temperature reached around 900°C, a layer of lead glaze formed on the crucible or cauldron.

This glaze is smooth and shiny, and looks like jade when knocked off. So the ancients got inspiration and tried to smelt this lead ore ash with clay or quartz sand.

They found that the finished product obtained by refining quartz sand had a moist, smooth and bright texture, which was the original lead-barium glass formula.

After thousands of years, in the Tang and Song dynasties, craftsmen improved the traditional lead-barium glass, using lead oxide as a flux. This increased the ductility of the high-lead glass, reduced bubbles and sand, and improved its appearance and performance. The finished product was basically green, commonly known as "green jade."

However, this "green jade" is different from the real glass in later generations.

Some people also call it glass.

During this year's immigration season, two "Green Jade" craftsmen were lured to Qiming Island by the Guangzhou station at a large price. They were immediately taken over by the industrial research group and began to focus on research on glass manufacturing.

Silica, the basic material of glass, makes up more than 40% of the mass of the Earth's mantle and crust and is the most abundant component of Earth's rocks.

However, silica is often mixed with many other ingredients, such as iron oxide, which gives the sand its brownish color. This ingredient often gives the resulting glass a green color, known as "beryl."

This thing works fine as a wine bottle or a canning jar, but it's a nuisance as a window or a telescope.

During this period, the best raw material for making clear glass was white sand or other uncontaminated silica.

For example, the white quartz used to make the famous Venetian "crystal" glass, or the flint selected from chalk to make the English "lead crystal" glass.

In fact, judging from the technology of later generations, these two types of glass and the "green jade" produced by the Shenzhou continent are somewhat unworthy of their names.

This is because the atomic arrangement of all glasses is completely disordered, forming a messy amorphous structure.

However, Zhang Ruosong, who was in charge of industrial planning, didn't expect to create clear glass, or even higher-end glass mirrors, anytime soon. He simply hoped to leverage the advanced knowledge and experience of the time travelers to improve and enhance the traditional Ming Dynasty "green jade" manufacturing process, thereby achieving large-scale industrial production.

That's right, Qiming Island wants to produce a large number of glass bottles to replace the current packaging material for canned products - ceramic jars.

Although the cost of ceramic pots is extremely low, using them as packaging materials can also maintain the shelf life of canned food for a longer period of time.

But ceramic pots are made of clay after all, which has extremely strong air permeability. This will cause the food in the cans to easily come into contact with the air, which in turn affects the storage quality and shelf life of the food.

Even when placed in the cabin, the clay pot heads would be damaged as the ship sways and rolls.

Of course, once the pottery jar is broken, the food inside cannot be eaten. You can just throw it away when you find it.

But the problem is that many pottery jars still appear to be quite strong. They are broken but not rotten, but only have tiny cracks. People don’t have time to take a closer look and have no idea that the pottery jars have been in contact with the outside air, causing a large number of bacteria to grow inside them.

If you fail to find this kind of pottery can and eat it directly, there is a high probability that you will suffer from vomiting and diarrhea, and your whole body will collapse in the cabin.

In severe cases, it can be life-threatening.

If the packaging material of the can is changed to glass, this situation will not occur and the shelf life will be much better.

"If you ask me, this glass bottle isn't very durable. It's even more likely to break than a clay pot if placed in a ship's cabin." Li Xianqing picked up a freshly fired glass bottle, examined it for a moment, and gently placed it on the table. "The best way would be to produce tinplate or tin-plated steel sheets to create a true tin can."

"Director, your requirements are the same as those for the military industry. Aren't they a bit high?" Zhang Ruosong laughed bitterly and shook his head. "Our ironmaking industry is just getting started, and research on alloy materials isn't even on our agenda for the next few years. How can we possibly produce tinplate for you? Glass bottles and cans may not be durable, but at least they're much more airtight than ceramic jars, and can provide reliable food for sea voyages."

"As for the issue of breakage, that's not difficult to solve. When we carry them on board, we can use packaging, isolation, and protective devices, and spread more wheat straw where they are stacked. Don't we always carry a lot of furs when we go to Daming? We can use these furs to wrap the glass cans we carry to provide better protection."

"Using fur to wrap glass bottles and cans?" Li Xianqing couldn't help but laugh when he heard this. "What if the can breaks and the food spills out? Wouldn't that stain the fur as well? Well, well, our conditions are so simple right now, and we can't have the best of both worlds for now. Besides, our glass workshop can't just make glass bottles to use as canning materials, can it?"

"Commercial information from Mexico states that British craftsmen have mastered the Venetian glassmaking process and are now producing high-quality flat glass and thick glass sheets (including mirrors). Should we also conduct research and development and experiment in this area, striving to produce some crystal-clear mirrors or colorless, transparent glass that we can then sell to the Ming Dynasty or Spanish America, earning more foreign exchange and boosting the development of our glass chemical industry?"

"Director, you're putting us in a difficult position. Although we all know that the production process of mirrors is mainly based on the silver mirror reaction, how can we clearly remember the specific production process and procedures?"

"You can do it!" Li Xianqing patted his shoulder firmly. "No one in this world understands the ultimate path of scientific development better than we do. As long as we keep our eyes on one direction and keep exploring, through trial and error, we will eventually reach the right result."

"Let's do our best!" Zhang Ruosong said. "The reason we're focusing on glass for research and development is not only to improve canned food packaging, but also because it has many important properties that other materials don't possess, especially for scientific research."

"Glass allows us to study natural phenomena and measure their effects, enabling us to develop more powerful technology. For example, barometers and thermometers work by showing the height of a column of liquid. Without a clear and strong material like glass, it would be impossible to see the rise and fall of that column."

"Besides its transparency, heat resistance, and strength, which make it suitable for thin-walled containers, glass is essentially inert. This is the core of all chemical research. Glass can be cast or blown into any shape of laboratory equipment, including test tubes, flasks, droppers, pipettes, tubing, condensers, fractionating columns, gas syringes, graduated cylinders, and watch glasses, which have a positive impact on our scientific research."

"It's hard to say how chemistry and physics would have developed without a material that is both inert and transparent to light, allowing us to observe reaction processes without contaminating the reactants."

"Whether it's as a building material, food packaging, or an essential entry technology for conducting scientific research, glass has been crucial to the development of our science and technology, or more precisely, the successful restoration of technology and civilization."

(End of this chapter)