I’m very tired. Please help me understand this.
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Most rocks are a mixture of aluminum and silicon oxides. Silicon oxide melts easily (which is why it makes good glass) but also breaks easily. Aluminum oxide is stronger but is more difficult to work with.
When rocks break down from wind and water, the soft silicon rich pieces get broken more easily into smaller pieces. The smaller lighter pieces get carried by wind and rivers while the bigger and heavier aluminum oxide rich pieces stay. The sand that is good for making glass is the sand that has been carried a long way from the mountain, and has a lot more silicon oxide grains.
So, back to your question. Before rocks can make good glass they need to be ground up and the hard/heavy parts taken out. Nature does this with wind and water.
The simple answer is that it can, except it has to be silica which most rocks arent fully composed of, and you need a lot more heat to do it.
I kept reading Sandwich and was very confused about why the rest was talking about rocks and glass…..
Sand is made of quartz (silica), a mineral. Not rocks.
Back to middle school science class my friend.
It’s specifically the silica in the sand that turns to glass. It’s not molten stone, it’s molten silica.
You can, it would just become a different type of glass. obsidian is considered to be a type of glass and slag from metal refining is also glass like or glass itself. It’s just to get specific properties it requires much more pure ingredients in specific proportions to ensure it has properties such as clarity, strength, colour, etc.
It’s because of the type of rocks sand is made of
Most Big rocks = a lot of different stuff
Sand = a lot of tiny silicate or quartz rocks
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