The Most Important Material Ever Made

00:00 Glass and our place in the universe
01:23 How Gorilla Glass works
04:35 What is glass?
05:15 Is glass a liquid?
07:29 Different types of glass
09:59 Invention of transparent glass
11:56 Why is some glass transparent?
14:54 Invention of glass lenses
15:52 Development of magnification
18:02 How to make glass more durable

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Patrons: Adam Foreman, Albert Wenger, Alexander Tamas, Anton Ragin, Balkrishna Heroor, Bertrand Serlet, Bill Linder, Blake Byers, Bruce, Dave Kircher, David Johnston, Evgeny Skvortsov, Garrett Mueller, Gnare, Greg Scopel, I. H., John H. Austin, Jr., Juan Benet, KeyWestr, Kirill Shore, Kyi, Lee Redden, Marinus Kuivenhoven, Matthias Wrobel, Meekay, Michael Krugman, Orlando Bassotto, Paul Peijzel, Reed Spilmann, Richard Sundvall, Sam Lutfi, TTST, Tj Steyn, Ubiquity Ventures, gpoly, john kiehl, meg noah, wolfee

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Directed by Petr Lebedev
Written by Petr Lebedev and Derek Muller
Edited by Nick Lear
Animated by Fabio Albertelli, Ivy Tello, David Szakaly and Rokas Viksraitis
Illustrated by Jakub Misiek, Emma Wright, and Maria Gusakovich
Filmed by Petr Lebedev, Sulli Yost and Miranda Prise
Additional research by Gabe Bean, Geeta Thakur
Produced by Petr Lebedev, Derek Muller, Rob Beasley Spence, Gabe Bean, and Tori Brittain
Thumbnail contributions by Jakub Misiek, Ren Hurley and Peter Sheppard
Additional video/photos supplied by Getty Images, Storyblocks
Music from Epidemic Sound

[jwngplay]

For the most part, glass is glass and glass breaks, and typically scratches at a level 6 with deeper grooves at a level 7

[kokilabendamor]

This video made the concept of glass very clear to me.

[Nik]

Fun glass fact. In the late 80's in East Germany they had a glass shortage problem. So a group was tasked with developing strong glass. After around 2 years they developed a glass that was very similar to Gorilla Glass and started to make glasses for restaurants from it. It was basically unbreakable. They were mieldy successful in East Germany, but not one glass manufacturer outside of it was interested, because most of their profits came from return customers, that broke their glasses. A couple years later the Berlin wall came down and the company went out of businees.
Now here's the kicker - Corning had developed the same glass around 20 years earlier and tried to do the same thing with it. It was met with the same response from the industry - no one wanted to distribute it. Corning shelved the glass until 2006 when Jobs called and they found a use for it.

[JordanClimbs]

I like that the title has change at least 3 times. I kept skipping over the video until the current title “The Most Important Material Ever Made”.

I guess marketing/advertising really does work. Thanks for all the quality content!

[itsROMPERS...]

I appreciate the clear AD indicator, and especially that it's a timer.

[duroncrush]

There is so much to know about glass you barely scratched the surface. Topics like tempering glass, Prince Rupert drops, amorphous metals, Soviet era unbreakable tumblers, it would take hours to cover. Loves the video

[GetMoGaming]

There was an ELEPHANT in the room here... Obviously purposefully avoided by the gorilla glassmakers and marketers. All the tests, all the talk and demos were all aimed at surface strength, but in practice, shocks can come from the sides too, which is always the most fragile part of a pane of glass. I'd like to see tests on edge point-shock resistance. That's what causes most phone screen damage. If your phone lands flat on the screen, then the screen is probably ok. if it is angled, there may be screen damage from edge-shock. All tests in the video had the panes carefully placed flat, which I think is misleading.

[lucianoag]

At min 19:00, the ion exchange doesn’t increase the compressive strength, it generates compressive stresses on the surface. Cracks propagate thanks to tensile stresses. Now you have to apply even higher stresses to get the miniature cracks to open. The same principle is used with tempering. When you quench hot glass, the surface cools faster than the core, locking it at lower densities. Then when the middle cools down slowly, it wants to reach a higher density but it can not. So the surface is compressed while the core is stretched.
With thin glass this is not easy since you can not achieve the necessary temperature gradient. Diffusion of atoms is then used because it is much slower.
Here also the core of the glass is stretched to equilibrate the internal forces.

[gamesterNobo]

21:43 “Glass is glass and glass breaks”
-Jerryrigeverything

[jannegrey]

In East Germany the did it sort of at least. I still have some of it. It feels a bit odd, but it is really durable for everyday use. I mean for drinking tea and such stuff. Glass is used in so many different ways that one has to be specific about what it is used for.

[tinfore]

I worked at a glass container facility for years. It's an amazing material. The viscosity of it is similar to if you took a spoon and try and stir a bucket of thick honey. Our furnaces needed to be able to melt the glass very quickly for the speed at which the containers were made. So they incorporated large electrodes in the side of the furnace submerged in the molten glass using the phenomenon that when the glass is molten, it becomes very conductive. The electrodes induced a current of up to around 1500 amps at 110 volts. If you were to insert a metal rod in the molten glass while it was energized, you would likely not survive.

[JordyIlijas]

This video title is much better! Even if it is slightly clickbaity it got me to start watching and now I’m interested

[jpantina]

Great video. As a former material science PhD that had an office in the "fiber optics building" this brought back a lot of great times. With my adviser having a humidity controlled "room" to experiment with 2-point bending of fibers under different humidity conditions to test fracture rate until the university made him take it down. The beautiful study of glass allowed me to travel to Italy as part of the international crystal federation. You can spend years studying it, which I did (just ask my parents)! Beautiful

[puffy_btw]

21:40 No way he blurred that Apple logo😂

[JasoTheRedF]

While not a regular viewer, I do want to say that I highly appreciate the ad timer, and I'm sure many other viewers do too. Though I have no doubt that sponsors hate it.

[jsmc]

Gorilla glass has its roots from Superfest, German glassware from 1980-1990. Essentially it flopped because of its durability.

[TheRogurt]

I swear Petr always gets sent out to the most random places.
Next video is about the sun
"so we sent Petr out to the surface of the sun"

[PushyPawn]

21:34 Dammit, you censored the phone's logo... Now we'll *never* know what kind of phone you have!

[VoicelessRabbit]

I just came here to say, Youtube has been REALLY wanting me to watch this for the past 24ish hours. I have also seen no fewer than 5 different thumbnails for this video so far.

[beachgaara]

Corning: Look how strong Gorilla Glass is!
My phone with Gorilla Glass: Falls off table onto floor and breaks