What Is It? for 3/4/12

"It's glass Jim but not as we know it."

This is a glob of glass on the end of a glass blowers pipe.....

http://www.chihuly.com/chronology.aspx

Looks like someone's making their own lava lamp bottle.

Someone blowing glass to form a bottle or pitcher They still do this at Jamestown, Virginia.

It's a glass vase or similar being blown, the old fashioned way.

I'm not sure if its red from strontium in the glass or just the heat of the glass.

Not the heat. Notice the reflection of light off the glass. If it was glowing you would not see a reflection.

You've never watched or witnessed glass blowing very much then. All through this video all of the molten glass has light reflecting off of its surface. The inner colored glass is the little glowing red glob added early in the video. You only get a brief glimpse of the cool temperature color as the flower vase gets placed into the annealing chamber at the end.

You are right about the reflection!

The stuff coming out of the oven still looks different than the first post's picture. I can see through that one and see the opposite inside wall, whereas the video looks opaque.

It depends on the glass used. The inner colored glass added in the video is transparent even when glowing red hot.

The picture is of a molten piece of glass on the end of a glass blower's pipe.

Glob of half molten glass on a pipe being formed for blowing.

It's the opening scene from yet another remake of "The Blob"...

It is glass being conformed and filling could be Strontium, Mercury,...though not very much probable with people without provention.

Well, we know that that picture is NOT marver-less ... http://www.memories-in-glass.com/how-to-marver.html

Not sure I understand an earlier answer about heat vs. color, that seems to imply glowing glass won't make a reflection. Lamp filaments, glowing at even higher temperatures, do make reflections, so. . . ?

I apparently misread or misunderstood what it said; thought the earlier post implied that it wouldn't be reflected by the marver or other surfaces, rather than that it wouldn't have reflections on it. It WILL, of course, have reflections on it, as well as be reflected. From the same starting point, I was speaking of reflections OF the filament by other surfaces, as well. And as for a filament that's off, it is easily demonstrated that it reflects, or it would look dead black instead of silvery & metallic. As for one that's on: no, I haven't seen reflections there, myself...

Here we have another anecdotal fallacy. All that it takes to see reflected light off of an ON filament is a significantly brighter light source than the filament when it is ON.

Where is the filament and where is the reflection in that picture?

It's an Egyptian stop light for camel crossings.

It's a blob of glass for glassblowing. I thought I had a picture of the finished product but can't seem to find it. They said that the color is created by adding metallic compounds to the glass.

This particular blob is unique because it was created on one of the Corning Museum of Glass setups on a cruise ship! This one was on the Celebrity Equinox. The glassblowers said it's challenging on the ship because they cannot use gas as fuel for the furnace. You can learn a lot more about glass making on the museum's FAQ page.