Glass Fragments

Tanner having trouble tying
the knot over the glass

The smell! THE SMELL!!!!

Cool, laser beam

Broken glass...

Breaking glass

I guess that today's lab was the most fun that we've had so far. We were breaking glass and studying their feature. We used a hammer and nail to shatter the glass, and a lot of us had quite a bit of trouble breaking the glass. I guess that I can say proudly that I succeeded on the first attempt, and some other people were hitting the nail too soft, afraid to break their fingers instead it frustrated me a lot to see people hammering at the glass for minutes over and over again... made it sound like a construction site. Then we went through some procedures to find out the density of the glass, and dipped it into distilled water, vegetable oil, and clove oil (which gave off a disgusting odor), to see if the density of the glass shard match that of the oil's. We then directed a laser pointer at 30 degrees flat on the desk at a semicircle container of the oil, and found the rate of refraction. All of this is to determine where the shard of glass came from.