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Comment by tifik | Hacker News Reader

Would/does that actually work? Its been a while since I watched SED Destins video about it, so I dont remember if they experiment with that. But intuitively, heating the glass so non-uniformly that the tail would melt and the bulb remained solid enough to keep the internal stresses intact, wouldnt that steep temperature gradient within the crystaline structure cause the entire drop to break?

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In this video someone does it and it seems to work.

https://youtube.com/shorts/ERDmKW65t38

But it's a very small drop and they don't melt it all the way to the bulb. I imagine that it could shatter in some circumstances.

(Incidentally glass isn't a crystal, but that's just a nitpick.),

Is glass still considered a form of liquid? Think I remember reading something about that years ago.

No, that's a classic misconception. People claimed that windows "flowed" because really old ones were thicker at the bottom, but that was just how some old window glass was made.

Yeah if you’re installing an uneven pane where would you orient the thick side?

The bottom.

I think the basis of the claim is that glass doesn't have the same kind of phase transition that a crystalline solid would. It just sort of gradually becomes more liquid-like as you heat it.

No, its disordered (ie. not a crystal) but not a liquid, it won't flow like a viscous liquid.

My comment was a bit over simplified, they do flow, but the time scale exceeds the entirety of human history [1].

[1] https://doi.org/10.1119/1.19026

Similar to the misconception that Earth's mantle is liquid. It isn't, but time is deep enough for solid rock to flow.

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