Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With
Speaker 1: tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Speaker 1: and welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulett,
Speaker 1: and I'm an editor here at how stuff works dot Com.
Speaker 1: Sitting across from me as usually senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Since you've abandoned me, my whole life has crashed. Won't
Speaker 1: you pick the pieces up? Because it feels just like
Speaker 1: I'm walking on broken glass. One of the best music
Speaker 1: videos ever. Hugh Laurie is in that music video and
Speaker 1: John Malkovich is in that music video. I didn't realize.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, it's funny. Okay, Hugh Laurie. This was
Speaker 1: Hugh Laurie pre House, so back when Hugh Laurie was
Speaker 1: still known as the British comedian, not the American dramatic actor.
Speaker 1: Still British actually British dramac actor playing in a wreckon character.
Speaker 1: So anyway, yes, we were going to talk about a
Speaker 1: glass related topic today, I studied any Lenox. Oh no, yes, no,
Speaker 1: we're gonna talk about gorilla glass. That's that is correct
Speaker 1: and uh, gorilla glass for those of you who are
Speaker 1: a fan of all kinds of little electronic things, uh,
Speaker 1: has become very popular um and and some weird way
Speaker 1: a matter of some speculation in the electronics industry because
Speaker 1: a lot of people want uh there uh smartphones and
Speaker 1: tablets and whatever else that they have that uses glass
Speaker 1: and beeps um to have this glass. Yeah, it's this
Speaker 1: damage resistant glass. It is scratch resistant, it is impact resistant. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's very thin, it's lightweight. So it's it's this
Speaker 1: glass that provides a lot of protection but does not
Speaker 1: add uh an appreciable amount to a device's weight or thickness.
Speaker 1: So any any manufacturer that's looking to make really thin, sexy,
Speaker 1: sleek gadgets, this is the sort of stuff they look
Speaker 1: at in order so that you know, they don't sacrifice
Speaker 1: ruggedness just to get something sleeking and sexy. Because if
Speaker 1: you get a really neat gadget that has let's say
Speaker 1: a touch screen display, and you after like using it
Speaker 1: for maybe a month, you start seeing little scratches or
Speaker 1: nicks in it, that might cheese you off a little bit.
Speaker 1: Because these things don't tend to be very cheap, right, correct,
Speaker 1: So you want to have something that's resistant to damage,
Speaker 1: so that you know you're not you're not you don't
Speaker 1: feel like it's falling apart a month after you bought it.
Speaker 1: I hate it when that happens. And gorilla glass is
Speaker 1: kind of a solution to that. Now, gorilla glass is
Speaker 1: a proprietary term, is owned by its trademarked by Corning,
Speaker 1: and uh, it's a uh it's an interesting development. In fact,
Speaker 1: it's it's so odd because you don't normally hear about
Speaker 1: component of gadgets becoming famous on their own, unless it's
Speaker 1: like a microprocessor, right, yeah, I mean you think about
Speaker 1: the uh, the guts of of things we talked about.
Speaker 1: You know, things like the WE remote and all the
Speaker 1: parts in it are off the shelf pieces. But I
Speaker 1: can't really actually name any of the accelerometers or you know,
Speaker 1: the other stuff. I mean, I know they're in there,
Speaker 1: but I don't know what who makes each chip and
Speaker 1: what it is. And I'm sure there are some people
Speaker 1: that can. It's not like well, yeah, especially people make
Speaker 1: them or are obsessed with it. But let's say that
Speaker 1: you know you're picking out a smartphone. You don't necessarily
Speaker 1: know or care who made the microphone in that smartphone. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you might say, I I have my my phone has
Speaker 1: a one gigga Hurts processor in it. Really who made it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You might. You might even know that, So microprocessors you
Speaker 1: might know. And gorilla glass has started to become that.
Speaker 1: And it's kind of interesting that gorilla glass could become
Speaker 1: like a rock star in the in the gadget world.
Speaker 1: But at the same time it is really impressed of stuff.
Speaker 1: I've actually seen some demonstrations of this glass in person,
Speaker 1: and I got to talk to some of the people
Speaker 1: who make it, and it's pretty neat. I mean, you
Speaker 1: would see a demonstration where they would take a regular
Speaker 1: glass and it was like a little sheet of glass
Speaker 1: as if you would you know, about the size that
Speaker 1: you would see on say a smartphone, all right, and
Speaker 1: they would have a little dot on the glass that
Speaker 1: would show you where to concentrate. It was like the
Speaker 1: center of the of the glass. It would be wrapped
Speaker 1: up in in plastic that's resistant to damage, and they
Speaker 1: would give people a little metal uh pointer essentially as
Speaker 1: we're like rounded at the end. And the idea kind
Speaker 1: of like a stylis for a yeah, similar to a stylist,
Speaker 1: except even more rounded than that. And the purpose for
Speaker 1: it is to apply pressure to that piece of glass
Speaker 1: to see how much pressure it takes to break the
Speaker 1: piece of glass. And over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: I saw people step up and they come up to
Speaker 1: the first piece that's the untreated glass, and you know,
Speaker 1: just without very much pressure at all, it shatters all right.
Speaker 1: The second piece of glass was treated glass, and they
Speaker 1: would press against that and they had to put a
Speaker 1: little more effort into it, but eventually it would have
Speaker 1: some cracks or it would even you know, shatter. And
Speaker 1: then they come up to the gorilla glass. And over
Speaker 1: and over I saw people putting their entire weight behind
Speaker 1: this thing, like they're constraining their weight on this tiny
Speaker 1: little point. Right the surface area is very small, so
Speaker 1: the pressure is intense, and yet the gorilla glass was
Speaker 1: standing up to that punishment. And they showed other elements
Speaker 1: as well, like a ball drop test where they would
Speaker 1: uh drop a weight onto the gorilla glass and show
Speaker 1: that it could withstand impacts. And they would do scratch
Speaker 1: tests as well, where they would take say keys and
Speaker 1: scratch it against the glass and regular glass. You know,
Speaker 1: you would see these marks and on gorilla glass it
Speaker 1: was really resisting it. So we wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the company of Corning, and then we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about exactly, well not exactly because a
Speaker 1: lot of this information is proprietary, but generally how they
Speaker 1: go about creating glass that can withstand this sort of damage. Well,
Speaker 1: Corning is a company known for its innovation, UM, and
Speaker 1: it is certainly not a new player in the world
Speaker 1: of glass. Now Corning is uh. You know, we've we've
Speaker 1: done the history of some companies on here. We probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't do the history of Corning, but the Cording website
Speaker 1: actually goes into quite some detail. There's a really cool
Speaker 1: timeline and you look at the stuff that's happened in
Speaker 1: the company's past. I'll just touch on a few of
Speaker 1: these that I thought were relevant. UM. I mean they
Speaker 1: were they were starting in eighteen seventy nine, and this
Speaker 1: is this will give you an idea of of why
Speaker 1: the company might be interested in in innovation and creating
Speaker 1: new products. UM. Corning was one of the companies asked
Speaker 1: to come up with bulbs for Edison's light bulb in
Speaker 1: eighteen seventy nine, and eight apparently was about half of
Speaker 1: the company's business was making the bulbs for for light bulbs. UM.
Speaker 1: And you know this is really when in the early
Speaker 1: part of the twentieth century the company really got interested
Speaker 1: in and coming up with new kinds of products. The
Speaker 1: railroad industry asked Corning to come up with glass that
Speaker 1: would resist they could use for railroad lights because the
Speaker 1: railroad industry was was of such critical importance at that
Speaker 1: point in the in the United States history. Um, they
Speaker 1: needed lights that would resist breaking um. And you know
Speaker 1: due to temperature, because they were deployed in all parts
Speaker 1: of the the uh, the country and all over the world, really,
Speaker 1: I guess. And the lights need to be you know,
Speaker 1: intense so that engineers could conductors could see the lights.
Speaker 1: So that meant that with a really intense light you
Speaker 1: get a lot of heat. So the glass had to
Speaker 1: be resistant to heat. Just because of that. That that's true.
Speaker 1: That's true, and also the vibration of trains sure um
Speaker 1: and uh also jackalopes um. And in one of the
Speaker 1: h researchers at Corning, Jesse Littleton Um asked his wife
Speaker 1: to his who was named Bessie Jesse and Bessie Um
Speaker 1: he gave her a piece of glass to make a
Speaker 1: cake on UM and the the glass held up to
Speaker 1: the heat of the oven making cake on it. And
Speaker 1: two years later they released Pyrex, the glass that you see,
Speaker 1: and I have a Pirex mixing dish at home. Products.
Speaker 1: Used them in a class in school for their they're
Speaker 1: known for their lab products. I didn't realize that Pirates
Speaker 1: was actually a brand name owned by Corning UM. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties UH. Corning was working on cathode ray
Speaker 1: tubes for experimental TVs and they were making regular c
Speaker 1: r T s UM. The J. Franklin Hyde came up
Speaker 1: with silicones, which are sort of a cross between glass
Speaker 1: and plastic. Again, this is kind of UH, this is
Speaker 1: kind of related, and they were. They actually ended up
Speaker 1: using related research on things like spacecraft windows and telescope
Speaker 1: mirrors and optical fiber. That's cool. UM s Donald Stookey
Speaker 1: came up with an idea UM for UH working on
Speaker 1: a project in Nineto with photosensitive glass. When the oven overheated,
Speaker 1: but the glass came out and it was milky white.
Speaker 1: And you may have some of this in your house
Speaker 1: if you have Corning where this is where this came from.
Speaker 1: He was trying an experience experiment with photosensitive glass, and
Speaker 1: it turned he realized that it wouldn't break when you
Speaker 1: dropped it. Just on personal note, boy, how do it
Speaker 1: will hurt if you drop it on your foot? But
Speaker 1: it is extremely resilient. I have my mom's old corning
Speaker 1: where that I got his hand me down stuff and
Speaker 1: it it's it's held up very well. UM and then
Speaker 1: in I mean, there's there's many more, but there's one
Speaker 1: I really wanted to talk about because it really has
Speaker 1: a lot to do with the manufacturing of guerrilla glass.
Speaker 1: Stuart Docherty and Clint Shake came up with the fusion
Speaker 1: overflow process UM. And this is a situation where molten
Speaker 1: glass overflows, uh the the um reservoir that it's in,
Speaker 1: and it pours down both sides of a tapered trough.
Speaker 1: So if you think of it's sort of like a
Speaker 1: hear drop where it's wide at the top and narrower
Speaker 1: at the bottom. The glass is flowing down both sides
Speaker 1: UM and it rejoins and fuses underneath. And they could
Speaker 1: uh this helped Corning develop liquid crystal glass substrates and
Speaker 1: is sort of related to grill inflecturing process. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: get into that in a minute. Um, just a couple
Speaker 1: other things. Optical fiber was a Corning invention in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy by doctors Robert Maher, Donald Keck, and Peter Schultz.
Speaker 1: These guys are incredibly smart. Yeah, well they made it
Speaker 1: in the National Inventor's Hall of Fame and also got
Speaker 1: the National Medal of Technology. Um, catalytic converters and cars.
Speaker 1: That that honeycomb stuff is apparently glass. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that or in at least in some cases. Um. And
Speaker 1: then uh, you talk about stem cell research. Um, they
Speaker 1: have a Corning developed a kind of glass called synthemax.
Speaker 1: Actually I think it's it's not really glass glass. It's
Speaker 1: it's a synthetic and animal free surface. Because apparent stem
Speaker 1: cells require animal they to grow animal stem cells, you
Speaker 1: have to have animal tissue, and synthomax uh basically takes
Speaker 1: that out of the equation. You can grow stem cells
Speaker 1: on synthomax, thereby preventing you from having to. Uh. So
Speaker 1: that uh, you know, that's that's pretty neat stuff. And
Speaker 1: and that's that's like science fiction stuff, is what that is.
Speaker 1: It kind of is. But you know, just obviously you've
Speaker 1: heard you've probably heard of a lot of these things,
Speaker 1: things like corning Ware and pyrex Um. I didn't realize
Speaker 1: that they had such a hand in optical fiber, which
Speaker 1: is something we've done a podcast on but not really
Speaker 1: surprising given the history of the company. But Guerrilla Glass
Speaker 1: does use some of this technology. Because we were talking
Speaker 1: about the fusion over overflow process and I guess it's
Speaker 1: we should really talk about how we make Guerrilla glass
Speaker 1: and how they make Grilla glass. Interesting, So I haven't
Speaker 1: been making a lot of it here it turns out
Speaker 1: that we don't have the robotic arms necessary for this
Speaker 1: um part. Well, first of all, let's to to kind
Speaker 1: of a step back. We'll talk about how you make
Speaker 1: glass in general, because their glasses are naturally occurring substance, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this isn't something chemically made in in you know, that
Speaker 1: is designed by people. This is something that you could
Speaker 1: find in nature. Nature. Yeah, anything where you know, lava flows,
Speaker 1: you can find uh glass, places where the lightning where
Speaker 1: the lightning where lightning, not the lightning, where lightning has
Speaker 1: struck the ground. You can sometimes find glass because it's
Speaker 1: essentially it's sand that's been exposed to intense heat. And
Speaker 1: it melts, and then when it cools, it's it's glass.
Speaker 1: And you know that sounds simple, but really that's what
Speaker 1: you start off with. And that's the basic, the most
Speaker 1: basic form of glass. Right. So now commercial glass is
Speaker 1: of course a little more complicated. We don't just dump
Speaker 1: a bunch of sand in and melt it down and
Speaker 1: then you get glass. It's uh, it tends to come
Speaker 1: from a you have three main sources where so you've
Speaker 1: got the sand, which is a silicon dioxide that's the
Speaker 1: chemical makeup of sand um and then you've got uh
Speaker 1: that that's the type that that Corning uses. The other
Speaker 1: two types are limestone or sodium carbonate. But Corning uses
Speaker 1: the silicon dioxide. And what they do is they combine
Speaker 1: the silicon dioxide with other chemicals before they melt it down,
Speaker 1: and the once they've added those extra chemicals in, and
Speaker 1: we don't know what all those chemicals are because this
Speaker 1: is part of the proprietary approach Corning takes. I mean,
Speaker 1: clearly they can't reveal everything because then they would lose
Speaker 1: their their advantage in the market, right correct, So this
Speaker 1: is this is secret stuff. But the secret stuff once
Speaker 1: they melt it all down. The resulting glass is called
Speaker 1: aluminose silicate, and so that essentially what that means is
Speaker 1: that the glass contains aluminum, silicon and oxygen. And uh
Speaker 1: there is one other thing that's in this glass sodium
Speaker 1: ions now, and ion in case you forgot, because we've
Speaker 1: talked about it before. But an ion is an atom
Speaker 1: that has either gained or lost an electron and thus
Speaker 1: has a net charge. Adams normally do not in their normally,
Speaker 1: in their natural state, do not have a charge because
Speaker 1: the number of electrons which have a negative charge is
Speaker 1: the same as the number of protons which have a
Speaker 1: positive charge, and the two cancel each other out. I
Speaker 1: thought a little I thought adams didn't carry a charge
Speaker 1: because they they're so small. I don't have wallets. That's
Speaker 1: also a problem, so the jokes are a problem. They
Speaker 1: use PayPal actually, so anyway, the uh So, an ion,
Speaker 1: of course, is like we said, it's one that has
Speaker 1: either too few or too many electrons compared to the
Speaker 1: natural state of the element, So it has either a
Speaker 1: positive or negative charge. Now, granted, if it has more
Speaker 1: electrons than normal has a negative charge, it has fewer
Speaker 1: electrons than normal as a positive charge, So the sodium
Speaker 1: ions are part of the structure of this glass. Now
Speaker 1: you can kind of think of this glass once it's melted, uh,
Speaker 1: and it is melted down into this V shaped trough
Speaker 1: that Chris was talking about, and actually they fill up
Speaker 1: the trough and then it starts to overflow the sides
Speaker 1: and they use robot arms. Robotic arms will pick up
Speaker 1: the edges of this very very thin material and pull
Speaker 1: them up to form sheets of glass. Right. So this
Speaker 1: is a little different from the earlier process because from
Speaker 1: what I understand that that other process actually want you
Speaker 1: actually wanted the glass to flow down the V and
Speaker 1: basically formed to lay a multi layer piece of glass.
Speaker 1: But the gorilla glass, you don't want that to happen.
Speaker 1: It's correct, Well, I think I think what happens is
Speaker 1: that's the initial part of the process. Again, this is
Speaker 1: proprietary stuff, so we don't know all the details. They
Speaker 1: obbuse skate some of this, but that you have the
Speaker 1: the glass meeting in the middle and fusing. But you
Speaker 1: just keep imagining that that trough fills and fills and
Speaker 1: fills until it reaches the top and then it starts
Speaker 1: to over flow and as it goes down the edge.
Speaker 1: These robotic arms catch the glass, the film of glass
Speaker 1: that's coming off the edge, and lifted up and then
Speaker 1: you cut it into sheets. So you've got the sheets
Speaker 1: of glass, and the glass has the aluminum, it has
Speaker 1: the silicon and oxygen and it and the sodium ions. Now,
Speaker 1: think of the glass as kind of like you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking about this sort of structure of of these elements.
Speaker 1: Think of it like a net. All right. So the aluminum,
Speaker 1: the silicon, and the auction are forming the rope that
Speaker 1: you would have in a net. So you've got this
Speaker 1: rope net. Now in the holes of that net are
Speaker 1: these sodium ions, al right, and that that gives the
Speaker 1: net a little stiffness. Alright, it's a little it's a
Speaker 1: little uh, it's not as flexible as it would be
Speaker 1: without the sodium. Then you say, well, how do we
Speaker 1: make this stronger? Well, what they do is they dip
Speaker 1: these sheets into a molten salt bath. And what they're
Speaker 1: using is potassium and the potass sum ions. So you've
Speaker 1: got potassium ions in this salt bath. The potassium ions
Speaker 1: actually replace the sodium ions. Now I want all of
Speaker 1: you to take out your periodic table of elements so everyone,
Speaker 1: get out your periodic table. Well wait, all right, So
Speaker 1: if you're looking at your periodic table and you try
Speaker 1: and find sodium on there, I'll I'll give you a hint.
Speaker 1: It's on the left side. Uh. You look at that
Speaker 1: first column. You see that sodium is there, and it's
Speaker 1: directly above potassium. So here's the way the elemental table
Speaker 1: is arranged that Chris has his out, I've got my
Speaker 1: not already here, um, but it's arranged so that the
Speaker 1: the when you look at a vertical stack of elements,
Speaker 1: those elements share similar properties. This isn't just arranged by
Speaker 1: weight or willy nilly. The vertical stacks symbolize elements that
Speaker 1: share very similar features. Chris is trying to distract me
Speaker 1: with animation now with his iPad. Stop it anyway. So
Speaker 1: you've got sodium directly above potassium. That means that sodium
Speaker 1: and potassium share a lot of the same qualities, but
Speaker 1: sodium is lighter than potassium. Potassium is a larger element,
Speaker 1: so it's got larger atoms that make that's important because
Speaker 1: what happens is when the potassium replaces the sodium in
Speaker 1: this salt bath, the potassium atoms are actually larger, and
Speaker 1: they make that you know, they take up more space
Speaker 1: in those holes in the net. It actually makes the
Speaker 1: material stiffer and more resistant to damage. UM. And that's
Speaker 1: it's pretty interesting stuff. And the reason why this works
Speaker 1: is because the energy you need to break a molecular bond,
Speaker 1: or an ionic bond in this case. UH, the energy
Speaker 1: you need to break an ionic bond varies depending upon
Speaker 1: the size of the atom. You need more energy to
Speaker 1: break the ionic bond for potassium than you do for sodium.
Speaker 1: So if you heat up that bath at just the
Speaker 1: right temperature and you dip a material like this glass
Speaker 1: that has sodium ions in it, that heat is going
Speaker 1: to be strong enough to break that ionic bond and
Speaker 1: the sodium ions will will part from the structure. UH.
Speaker 1: Now you have to make sure that the heat is
Speaker 1: not too high, because if it's too high, one of
Speaker 1: two things could happen. You would prevent the potassium ions
Speaker 1: from bonding because the energy would be too great for
Speaker 1: them to form an ionic bond. Or you would actually
Speaker 1: reach the melting point of the glass itself and the
Speaker 1: glass would melt into the bath and you wouldn't have
Speaker 1: anything to show for it. That that seems like it
Speaker 1: would be counterproductive yet, right, so you have to find
Speaker 1: just the right temperature and uh, and that's kind of
Speaker 1: what Corning has done. Dy've they've arranged it. So I
Speaker 1: think it's around oh four degrees celsius, which is about
Speaker 1: seven fifty two degrees fahrenheit for this salt bath. More
Speaker 1: or less, it's it's it's toasty so or molten as
Speaker 1: we often say. So the you've got the sodium ions,
Speaker 1: they go away, the potassium ions take their play ace.
Speaker 1: This makes the entire structure much more uh, stiff and
Speaker 1: resistant to damage. You then withdraw the the glass very
Speaker 1: carefully from the molten bath and you let it dry
Speaker 1: and cool and um, and then you've got this compressed material.
Speaker 1: It's and it's compressed because those potassium ions are larger
Speaker 1: than the sodium ions. Um. And just in case you're curious,
Speaker 1: sodium and potassium both belonged to a group of elements
Speaker 1: called active metals, and active metals are are materials that
Speaker 1: react very strongly with with other substances. So that's that's
Speaker 1: the secret, right, that's exactly the well, again, not exactly,
Speaker 1: but that's the general process that Corning uses in order
Speaker 1: to chemically strengthened glass. And there are other there are
Speaker 1: other processes out there that are similar. But like when
Speaker 1: I was talking about the demonstration where you had the
Speaker 1: the regular glass, the treated glass, and the gorilla glass,
Speaker 1: the treated glass is glass that's been has gone through
Speaker 1: at least a similar process, but doesn't have all the
Speaker 1: little ements that the corning uses to guarantee a very
Speaker 1: strong compressed material. Yeah. I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: who who own portable electronics that have a glass front
Speaker 1: on it, um probably at least at one point said,
Speaker 1: you know to ourselves, man, glass, that's that's gonna be difficult.
Speaker 1: And then you start looking at things like, um, uh,
Speaker 1: you know that now that we have the two sided phones,
Speaker 1: you know we have glass on more than one side
Speaker 1: of the device. And you're starting to go, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is great, but I dropped my phone a lot, or
Speaker 1: you know, how am I gonna How am I gonna
Speaker 1: prevent this thing from I might put in my pocket
Speaker 1: where my keys are? Yeah, and I have done that.
Speaker 1: I've well, I've done that and and had uh my
Speaker 1: phone gets scratched up on the non glass surfaces, and
Speaker 1: you think glass, well, it's doomed. Man, Um, why don't
Speaker 1: they just use plastic? Well, of course, glass is going
Speaker 1: to make the display uh so much more vivid. Um,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a better material to use. Uh. So
Speaker 1: it's it's really impressive that uh there is a material
Speaker 1: that that works so well for that. Of course, Uh
Speaker 1: you know, other manufacturers have their own, as you pointed out,
Speaker 1: and other, um proprietary methods for using glass. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean this is not something that you go by
Speaker 1: yourself and add to you know, you you can't go
Speaker 1: get a piece of grilla glass from Corning and say,
Speaker 1: you know, I like the glass on my you know,
Speaker 1: on my smartphone pretty well. But I'm pretty sure I
Speaker 1: could pry this out and put a piece of grilla glass.
Speaker 1: And you can't. You can't just go and do that.
Speaker 1: It's not like not like a screen protector that you
Speaker 1: would go and buy either a store or a third
Speaker 1: party vendor. I mean you it's it's one of those
Speaker 1: things that gorilla glass is something that's sold directly to manufacturers,
Speaker 1: not to consumers. So so who buys it? Then? Who
Speaker 1: is using this? Big companies? So Sony is one of them,
Speaker 1: and they use gorilla glass on their Bravia line of
Speaker 1: television sets. You might say, well, gosh, why would you
Speaker 1: need this on a TV set? Well, you know you
Speaker 1: can carry your fifty I can give you. I can
Speaker 1: give you a few different reasons, all right. One if
Speaker 1: you if you got kids for one thing, for one thing. Here,
Speaker 1: here's here's the downside to our our our gadget revolution
Speaker 1: is that we're training ourselves that the way you interact
Speaker 1: with screens is that you touched them. You don't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there are kids who I heard stories from parents.
Speaker 1: This is all anecdotal, I know, but I've heard stories
Speaker 1: from parents who say their kids become used to manipulating
Speaker 1: things like the iPad, and they get used to swiping
Speaker 1: their hands, and then they come up to a television
Speaker 1: they want to change the channel, and they put their
Speaker 1: hand against the TV and start moving their hand around, thinking, well,
Speaker 1: this is how it works on the iPad, so it
Speaker 1: should work here, and it don't because that's not the
Speaker 1: You know, the rest of us have been trained that
Speaker 1: we use the remote control to do that. We don't
Speaker 1: get up and change the channel. That's what we had
Speaker 1: to do in the seventies, and we do not want
Speaker 1: to return to those dark days. But of course you
Speaker 1: know that children find out that they can't go up
Speaker 1: and and you know, manipulate the TV with the hands.
Speaker 1: They are ignorant of the dark days of the seventies
Speaker 1: where you had to get up and turn a switch,
Speaker 1: or that you have to wear bell bottoms or or
Speaker 1: these polyester suits and listen to the beg's. They don't
Speaker 1: I'm getting off your your your topic. Yes, and then
Speaker 1: of course they find out like Door the explorer friends
Speaker 1: swiper the fox might find out that you can't swipe,
Speaker 1: and then they go, oh, man, that's a bummer. I
Speaker 1: have no idea what you're talking about, by the way,
Speaker 1: that that's a quote, because don't they tell him no swiping.
Speaker 1: I don't have a kid, so I don't know what
Speaker 1: door they explorer anyway, But yes, I know I can.
Speaker 1: I can say this actually from someone who has young children.
Speaker 1: You know, I've watched them go up and pound on
Speaker 1: the TV. And you know with a with a crty
Speaker 1: you have as as much thicker than it is with
Speaker 1: flat panel TV. So then something like the Bravio line
Speaker 1: where it's a flat panel display sex you display. So
Speaker 1: that's here, that's one. Here's two all right, a lot
Speaker 1: of these television's people mount them to walls. Well, if
Speaker 1: for some reason the mounting goes wrong, then there may
Speaker 1: be a an accident. And you want that glass to
Speaker 1: be strong, because one you want to preserve the integrity
Speaker 1: of whatever the devices, and two you don't want shattered
Speaker 1: glass to go everywhere. Glass needs to be a bad
Speaker 1: thing in the most households. It feels like you're walking
Speaker 1: on broken glass. It does feel like you're walking on
Speaker 1: broken glass, because all right, anyway, uh so that's the
Speaker 1: second one. Here's the third case, and this is one
Speaker 1: that it's it's already proven because we've seen it happen.
Speaker 1: You're playing the Wii. You have not put that handstrap
Speaker 1: around your wrist, and then you swings your sword because
Speaker 1: link needs to destroy that next monster and it flies
Speaker 1: out your hand and into the screen. And because we
Speaker 1: will get complaints if we don't mention this. You could
Speaker 1: also do that with the one from the Sony Move
Speaker 1: or you know, whatever prop you're using with your Let's
Speaker 1: say that let's say you're standing too close to the
Speaker 1: connect and you're playing the boxing game, which I don't
Speaker 1: recommend doing that. Yeah, use props with a connect. Yes,
Speaker 1: that's true. You could also Yeah, you could potentially use
Speaker 1: a prop with the connect and then the same thing
Speaker 1: could happen. In other words, we're swinging a lot of
Speaker 1: stuff at our televisions these days, and as a result, uh,
Speaker 1: there's the the chance possibility and there's the chance that
Speaker 1: you could accidentally lose your grip and fling something at
Speaker 1: the TV. And so the gorilla glass is a good
Speaker 1: way to prevent that from ruining the television and your day. Um.
Speaker 1: But there are other products that also other companies that
Speaker 1: use gorilla glass. Samsung has used it for the Galaxy Tab,
Speaker 1: and Dell used it for the Dell Streak, and there
Speaker 1: are lots of other ones. But the thing is that
Speaker 1: a lot of the these these agreements between companies are
Speaker 1: not public knowledge, and so Gorilla Corning cannot reveal all
Speaker 1: of its clients because you know, they have agreements that
Speaker 1: are secret, right, nondisclosure exactly. They're in DA's there. So
Speaker 1: you know, we honestly do not know which gadgets have
Speaker 1: gorilla glass, which one stone. There are ways to find out,
Speaker 1: but we technically do not want to do that because
Speaker 1: we like our gadgets and don't want to try and
Speaker 1: see if we can ruin them. So, um, yeah, those
Speaker 1: would be the customers. It would be the big corporations,
Speaker 1: not Joe down the street who wants to put a
Speaker 1: new a new sheet of glass on his smartphone. Um.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure we're gonna see gorilla glass used in
Speaker 1: a lot more applications and will price see other competitors
Speaker 1: try to develop similar products that have, you know, comparable
Speaker 1: strength to gorilla glass. And Corning isn't gonna rest on
Speaker 1: its laurels. It's not like it's not like that company
Speaker 1: is gonna say, oh, we found it, let's we're done.
Speaker 1: I mean, the history of the company shows they're all
Speaker 1: about innovation. Yeah, and for something like glass, you might
Speaker 1: you know, and it isn't as sexy as some of
Speaker 1: the other or well you might not necessarily find it
Speaker 1: as sexy as some of the other, uh different kinds
Speaker 1: of innovation we've mentioned on this show before, but obviously
Speaker 1: it plays an important part and the things that we
Speaker 1: use every day. So yeah, and here's just a little
Speaker 1: piece of trivia. I think it's kind of cool that
Speaker 1: doesn't deal directly with gorilla glass, but more with the
Speaker 1: whole ion exchange process. This is something It sounds like
Speaker 1: it's pretty new, like this is this is something that
Speaker 1: maybe dates back to the sixties, you know, like that
Speaker 1: that's when we first started figuring out how to do
Speaker 1: this ion exchange thing. But the truth is it dates
Speaker 1: way back earlier than that, because stained glass uses a
Speaker 1: similar process in which you add certain metals to a
Speaker 1: glass mixture in order to create the various colors. And it's, um,
Speaker 1: it's this these metal oxides that you add to molten
Speaker 1: glass that gives stained glass and you know those vibrant
Speaker 1: but like cobalt blue. It's cobalt that's what adding to
Speaker 1: the glass mixture in order to do it. And it's
Speaker 1: using the same sort of process of an ion exchange
Speaker 1: and really really hot molten glass. So um so yeah, this,
Speaker 1: this whole process that that Corning is using is something
Speaker 1: that dates back centuries. They've just refined it to an
Speaker 1: exact science and that's really really good for those of
Speaker 1: us who like our gadgets unscratched. Yes, I am one
Speaker 1: of those people. I do not like scratching my gadgets
Speaker 1: unless they're itchy. Alright, So on that note, let's wrap
Speaker 1: this up, folks. If you want to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: to us where you have any comments about gorilla glass
Speaker 1: or or maybe there's something related to it that you
Speaker 1: would like to hear more about. Let us know. You
Speaker 1: can contact us on Twitter and Facebook are handled. There
Speaker 1: is text stuff h s W or you can send
Speaker 1: us an email and that address is tech stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and Chris and I will
Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon moral this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics. VI is it how stuff works dot com.
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