W. H. Zachariasen

Zachariasen published The Atomic Arrangement in Glass, a classic paper that had perhaps the most influence of any published work on glass science. Zachariasen’s work placed the understanding of glass structure and its relationship to composition on its modern footing. The principles of his atomic…

…in 1932 by the physicist W.H. Zachariasen, glass is an extended, three-dimensional network of atoms that form a solid which lacks the long-range periodicity (or repeated, orderly arrangement) typical of crystalline materials.

According to Zachariasen, in order for a given oxide A_mO_n to form a glassy solid, it must meet the following criteria: (1) the oxygen should be linked to no more than two atoms of A, (2) the coordination number of the oxygen about…