0:00

Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve

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Camray. It's ready. Are you get

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in touch with technology? With tech Stuff

0:09

from how stuff works dot com.

0:17

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to tech stuff. My name

0:19

is Chris Poulett, and I'm an editor here at how stuff

0:21

works dot Com. Sitting across from me

0:23

as usually senior writer Jonathan Strickland.

0:26

Since you've abandoned me, my whole

0:28

life has crashed. Won't you pick the pieces

0:30

up? Because it feels just like I'm walking

0:32

on broken glass. One

0:36

of the best music videos ever.

0:39

Hugh Laurie is in that music video and

0:42

John Malkovich is in that music video.

0:44

I didn't realize. Oh my gosh, it's funny.

0:46

Okay, Hugh Laurie. This was Hugh Laurie

0:48

pre House, so back when Hugh Laurie was

0:50

still known as the British comedian,

0:53

not the American dramatic

0:56

actor. Still British actually

0:58

British dramac actor playing in a wreckon character.

1:02

So anyway, yes, we were going to talk about

1:04

a glass related topic today,

1:06

I studied any Lenox. Oh no,

1:10

yes, no, we're gonna talk about gorilla glass.

1:13

That's that is correct and uh, gorilla

1:15

glass for those of you who are

1:18

a fan of all kinds of little electronic

1:21

things, uh, has become very

1:23

popular um and and some

1:26

weird way a matter of some speculation

1:29

in the electronics industry because a lot of people want

1:32

uh there uh smartphones

1:34

and tablets and whatever else

1:36

that they have that uses glass and beeps

1:39

um to have this glass. Yeah, it's

1:41

this damage resistant glass.

1:43

It is scratch resistant, it is impact

1:45

resistant. Uh, it's it's very

1:48

thin, it's lightweight. So

1:50

it's it's this glass that provides a

1:52

lot of protection but does not add

1:55

uh an appreciable amount to

1:57

a device's weight or thickness.

2:00

So any any manufacturer that's

2:02

looking to make really thin, sexy,

2:04

sleek gadgets, this

2:06

is the sort of stuff they look at in order so that

2:09

you know, they don't sacrifice ruggedness

2:12

just to get something sleeking and sexy. Because

2:14

if you get a really neat gadget that has

2:17

let's say a touch screen display,

2:19

and you after like using

2:22

it for maybe a month, you start seeing little

2:24

scratches or nicks in it, that

2:26

might cheese you off a little bit.

2:29

Because these things don't tend to be very cheap,

2:32

right, correct, So you want

2:34

to have something that's resistant

2:36

to damage, so that you know you're not

2:38

you're not you don't feel like it's falling apart a month

2:40

after you bought it. I hate

2:42

it when that happens. And gorilla glass is kind

2:44

of a solution to that. Now, gorilla glass

2:47

is a proprietary term, is

2:49

owned by its trademarked by Corning,

2:53

and uh, it's a uh it's

2:55

an interesting development. In fact, it's it's

2:57

so odd because you don't normally hear about component

3:00

of gadgets becoming famous

3:02

on their own, unless it's like a microprocessor,

3:05

right, yeah, I mean you think about

3:07

the uh, the guts of of things we

3:09

talked about. You know, things like the

3:11

WE remote and all the parts in it

3:14

are off the shelf pieces. But I

3:16

can't really actually name any of

3:19

the accelerometers or you know,

3:21

the other stuff. I mean, I know they're in

3:23

there, but I don't know what who makes each

3:25

chip and what it is. And I'm sure there are some people that

3:27

can. It's not like well, yeah, especially people

3:29

make them or are obsessed with it. But let's say that

3:31

you know you're picking out a smartphone. You don't

3:33

necessarily know or care who

3:37

made the microphone in that smartphone.

3:39

Yeah, you might say, I I have my

3:41

my phone has a one gigga Hurts processor

3:43

in it. Really who made it? Yeah?

3:46

You might. You might even know that,

3:48

So microprocessors you might know.

3:50

And gorilla glass has started to become that. And

3:52

it's kind of interesting that gorilla glass could become like

3:54

a rock star in the in

3:56

the gadget world. But at the same time it

3:59

is really impressed of stuff. I've actually

4:01

seen some demonstrations

4:03

of this glass in person, and I got to talk to

4:05

some of the people who make it, and it's pretty

4:07

neat. I mean, you would see a demonstration where

4:09

they would take a regular glass and

4:12

it was like a little sheet of glass as if you would you

4:14

know, about the size that you would see on say

4:17

a smartphone, all right, and

4:19

they would have a little dot on the glass

4:21

that would show you where to concentrate.

4:23

It was like the center of the of the glass.

4:25

It would be wrapped up in in plastic

4:28

that's resistant to damage, and they would

4:30

give people a little metal uh

4:33

pointer essentially as we're like rounded

4:35

at the end. And the idea kind

4:37

of like a stylis for a

4:40

yeah, similar to a stylist, except even more

4:42

rounded than that. And the purpose for it is to

4:44

apply pressure to that piece of glass

4:47

to see how much pressure it takes to break the piece

4:49

of glass. And over and over and over again,

4:51

I saw people step up and they come up to the

4:53

first piece that's the untreated glass,

4:55

and you know, just without very much pressure

4:57

at all, it shatters all right. The second piece

4:59

of glass was treated glass, and they would

5:02

press against that and they had to put a little more effort

5:04

into it, but eventually it would have some cracks

5:06

or it would even you know, shatter. And then they come

5:08

up to the gorilla glass. And over and over

5:10

I saw people putting their entire weight

5:13

behind this thing, like they're constraining

5:15

their weight on this tiny little point. Right the

5:18

surface area is very small, so the pressure is

5:20

intense, and yet the gorilla glass

5:22

was standing up to that punishment. And they showed

5:24

other elements as well, like a ball

5:27

drop test where they would uh drop

5:29

a weight onto the gorilla glass and show

5:31

that it could withstand impacts. And they

5:33

would do scratch tests as well, where they would take

5:35

say keys and scratch it

5:37

against the glass and regular glass. You know, you

5:39

would see these marks and on gorilla glass

5:41

it was really resisting it. So we wanted

5:43

to talk a little bit about the company of Corning,

5:46

and then we're going to talk about exactly, well

5:48

not exactly because a lot of this information is proprietary,

5:50

but generally how they go about creating

5:53

glass that can withstand this sort of damage.

5:56

Well, Corning is a company known for

5:58

its innovation, UM,

6:01

and it is certainly not a new

6:03

player in the world of glass. Now Corning

6:05

is uh. You know, we've we've done

6:08

the history of some companies on here. We probably

6:10

wouldn't do the history of Corning, but

6:12

the Cording website actually goes into

6:14

quite some detail. There's a really

6:17

cool timeline and you look at the

6:19

stuff that's happened in the company's

6:21

past. I'll just touch on a few of these

6:23

that I thought were relevant. UM.

6:25

I mean they were they were starting in eighteen seventy nine,

6:27

and this is this will give you an idea of

6:29

of why the company might be interested

6:32

in in innovation and creating new

6:34

products. UM. Corning was one of

6:36

the companies asked to come up with bulbs

6:38

for Edison's light bulb in

6:40

eighteen seventy nine, and eight

6:43

apparently was about half of the company's business

6:45

was making the bulbs for for light bulbs.

6:49

UM. And you know this is really when

6:51

in the early part of the twentieth century the company

6:53

really got interested in and coming up

6:55

with new kinds of products. The railroad

6:57

industry asked Corning to come up with

7:00

glass that would resist they could use

7:02

for railroad lights because the railroad industry

7:05

was was of such critical importance

7:07

at that point in the in the United States

7:09

history. Um, they needed

7:11

lights that would resist breaking um.

7:14

And you know due to temperature, because

7:16

they were deployed in all parts of the

7:18

the uh, the country and all over the world, really,

7:20

I guess. And the lights need to be you

7:23

know, intense so that engineers could conductors

7:25

could see the lights. So that meant that with

7:27

a really intense light you get a lot of heat. So

7:30

the glass had to be resistant to heat.

7:32

Just because of that. That that's true. That's

7:34

true, and also the vibration of

7:36

trains sure um and

7:39

uh also jackalopes um.

7:43

And in one of the

7:45

h researchers at Corning, Jesse Littleton

7:47

Um asked his wife to his who

7:50

was named Bessie Jesse and Bessie Um

7:52

he gave her a piece of glass to make a cake on UM

7:57

and the the glass held up

7:59

to the heat of the oven making cake

8:01

on it. And two years later they released Pyrex,

8:06

the glass that you see, and I have a

8:08

Pirex mixing dish at home. Products.

8:12

Used them in a class in school

8:14

for their they're known for their lab products. I didn't

8:16

realize that Pirates was actually a brand name

8:18

owned by Corning UM. In

8:21

the nineteen twenties UH. Corning

8:23

was working on cathode ray tubes for experimental

8:26

TVs and they were

8:28

making regular c r T s UM.

8:32

The J. Franklin Hyde came up with

8:34

silicones, which are sort of a cross between

8:36

glass and plastic. Again, this

8:38

is kind of UH, this is kind of related,

8:41

and they were. They actually ended up using

8:44

related research on things

8:46

like spacecraft windows and telescope

8:48

mirrors and optical fiber. That's cool.

8:51

UM s Donald Stookey came

8:53

up with an idea UM for UH

8:56

working on a project in Nineto

8:58

with photosensitive glass. When the oven overheated,

9:01

but the glass came out and it was milky

9:04

white. And you may

9:06

have some of this in your house if you have Corning

9:08

where this is where this came from.

9:10

He was trying an experience experiment with photosensitive

9:13

glass, and it turned he realized that it wouldn't

9:15

break when you dropped it. Just on personal

9:17

note, boy, how do it will hurt

9:19

if you drop it on your foot? But it is

9:21

extremely resilient. I have my mom's old

9:23

corning where that I got his hand me down stuff

9:26

and it it's it's held up

9:28

very well. UM

9:30

and then in I mean, there's there's

9:32

many more, but there's one I really wanted to talk

9:34

about because it really has a lot to do with the manufacturing

9:37

of guerrilla glass. Stuart

9:39

Docherty and Clint Shake came up with

9:41

the fusion overflow process UM.

9:44

And this is a situation where

9:47

molten glass overflows, uh

9:50

the the um

9:52

reservoir that it's in, and it pours down

9:55

both sides of a tapered trough.

9:57

So if you think of it's sort of like a

10:00

hear drop where it's wide at the top and narrower

10:02

at the bottom. The glass is flowing down both

10:04

sides UM and it rejoins

10:06

and fuses underneath. And they could

10:09

uh this helped Corning develop liquid

10:11

crystal glass substrates and

10:14

is sort of related

10:16

to grill inflecturing process. Yeah, we'll get

10:18

into that in a minute. Um, just a

10:20

couple other things. Optical fiber was

10:22

a Corning invention in nineteen seventy by doctors

10:25

Robert Maher, Donald Keck, and

10:27

Peter Schultz. These guys are incredibly

10:29

smart. Yeah, well they made it in the National

10:31

Inventor's Hall of Fame and also got the National Medal

10:34

of Technology. Um, catalytic

10:36

converters and cars. That that honeycomb

10:39

stuff is apparently glass. I

10:41

didn't realize that or in

10:43

at least in some cases. Um.

10:46

And then uh,

10:48

you talk about stem cell research. Um,

10:51

they have a Corning developed a kind

10:53

of glass called synthemax. Actually I think

10:55

it's it's not really glass glass. It's it's

10:57

a synthetic and animal free surface. Because

10:59

apparent stem cells require animal

11:02

they to grow animal stem

11:04

cells, you have to have animal tissue, and synthomax

11:07

uh basically takes that out of the equation.

11:10

You can grow stem cells on synthomax,

11:12

thereby preventing you from having to. Uh.

11:17

So that uh, you know, that's that's pretty

11:19

neat stuff. And and that's that's like science

11:21

fiction stuff, is what that is. It kind of

11:23

is. But you know, just obviously

11:26

you've heard you've probably heard of a lot of these things, things

11:28

like corning Ware and pyrex Um.

11:30

I didn't realize that they had such a

11:33

hand in optical fiber, which is something we've done

11:35

a podcast on but not really

11:37

surprising given the history of the company. But Guerrilla

11:40

Glass does use some of this technology.

11:42

Because we were talking about the fusion over

11:44

overflow process and I guess it's we should really

11:46

talk about how we make Guerrilla glass

11:49

and how they make Grilla glass. Interesting, So I haven't

11:51

been making a lot of it here it turns out that

11:53

we don't have the robotic arms necessary

11:55

for this um part. Well,

11:57

first of all, let's to to kind of

12:00

a step back. We'll talk about how you make glass in

12:02

general, because their

12:04

glasses are naturally occurring substance,

12:07

right, Yeah, this isn't something

12:09

chemically made in in you

12:11

know, that is designed by people. This is

12:13

something that you could find in nature. Nature.

12:16

Yeah, anything where you know, lava flows,

12:18

you can find uh glass,

12:21

places where the lightning where the lightning

12:24

where lightning, not the lightning, where lightning

12:26

has struck the ground. You can

12:28

sometimes find glass because it's

12:30

essentially it's sand that's been

12:33

exposed to intense heat.

12:35

And it melts, and then when it cools,

12:37

it's it's glass. And you

12:40

know that sounds simple, but really that's what you

12:42

start off with. And that's

12:44

the basic, the most basic form of glass.

12:46

Right. So now commercial glass is of course

12:48

a little more complicated. We don't just dump

12:50

a bunch of sand in and melt it down and then you

12:52

get glass. It's uh, it tends to

12:55

come from a you have three main sources

12:57

where so you've got the sand, which is a silicon

13:00

dioxide that's the chemical

13:02

makeup of sand um

13:04

and then you've got uh

13:07

that that's the type that that Corning uses.

13:09

The other two types are limestone

13:12

or sodium carbonate. But Corning uses

13:14

the silicon dioxide. And

13:17

what they do is they combine the silicon dioxide

13:19

with other chemicals before they melt

13:21

it down, and the once they've

13:24

added those extra chemicals in, and we don't know what

13:26

all those chemicals are because this is part of

13:28

the proprietary approach Corning takes.

13:30

I mean, clearly they can't reveal everything because

13:33

then they would lose their their advantage

13:35

in the market, right correct, So this is

13:37

this is secret stuff. But

13:39

the secret stuff once they melt it all down.

13:42

The resulting glass is called aluminose

13:44

silicate, and so that essentially

13:47

what that means is that the glass contains aluminum,

13:49

silicon and oxygen. And

13:52

uh there is one other thing that's in

13:54

this glass sodium

13:57

ions

13:59

now, and ion in case you forgot,

14:01

because we've talked about it before. But an ion is

14:03

an atom that has either gained or lost

14:05

an electron and thus has a net

14:07

charge. Adams normally

14:09

do not in their normally, in their natural

14:12

state, do not have a charge because the number

14:14

of electrons which have a negative charge is

14:16

the same as the number of protons which have a

14:19

positive charge, and the two cancel each

14:21

other out. I thought a little I thought

14:23

adams didn't carry a charge because they

14:25

they're so small. I don't have wallets. That's

14:28

also a problem, so

14:31

the jokes are a problem. They use PayPal

14:33

actually, so anyway, the

14:35

uh So, an ion, of course, is

14:37

like we said, it's one that has either too few or too many

14:39

electrons compared to the natural state

14:42

of the element, So it has either a

14:44

positive or negative charge. Now, granted, if it has

14:46

more electrons than normal has a negative charge,

14:48

it has fewer electrons than normal as a positive

14:50

charge, So the sodium ions

14:53

are part of the structure

14:55

of this glass. Now you can kind

14:57

of think of this glass once

14:59

it's melted, uh, and it is melted down into

15:01

this V shaped trough that Chris was

15:03

talking about, and actually they

15:06

fill up the trough and then it starts to overflow

15:08

the sides and they use robot

15:11

arms. Robotic arms will pick

15:13

up the edges of this very very

15:15

thin material and pull

15:18

them up to form sheets of glass. Right.

15:21

So this is a little different from the earlier process

15:23

because from what I understand that that other

15:25

process actually want you

15:27

actually wanted the glass to flow

15:29

down the V and basically

15:32

formed to lay a multi layer

15:35

piece of glass. But the gorilla glass, you don't want

15:37

that to happen. It's correct, Well, I think

15:39

I think what happens is that's the initial part

15:41

of the process. Again, this is proprietary stuff,

15:44

so we don't know all the details. They obbuse

15:46

skate some of this, but that you have

15:49

the the glass meeting in

15:51

the middle and fusing. But you

15:54

just keep imagining that that trough fills

15:56

and fills and fills until it reaches the

15:58

top and then it starts to over flow

16:00

and as it goes down the edge. These robotic arms

16:02

catch the glass, the film of glass

16:04

that's coming off the edge, and lifted up

16:06

and then you cut it into sheets. So

16:09

you've got the sheets of glass, and the glass has

16:12

the aluminum, it has the silicon and oxygen

16:14

and it and the sodium ions. Now, think of

16:17

the glass as kind of like you know, we're

16:19

talking about this sort of structure

16:22

of of these elements. Think of it like a net.

16:25

All right. So the

16:27

aluminum, the silicon, and the auction are forming

16:29

the rope that you would have in a net.

16:32

So you've got this rope net. Now in the

16:34

holes of that net are these

16:36

sodium ions, al

16:38

right, and that that gives the net a

16:41

little stiffness. Alright, it's

16:43

a little it's a little uh, it's

16:45

not as flexible as it would be without the sodium.

16:48

Then you say, well, how do we make

16:50

this stronger? Well, what they do is

16:52

they dip these sheets into a molten

16:55

salt bath. And what they're

16:57

using is potassium and

16:59

the potass sum ions. So

17:01

you've got potassium ions in this salt bath. The

17:04

potassium ions actually replace the sodium

17:06

ions. Now I want all

17:08

of you to take out your periodic table

17:11

of elements so everyone, get out your periodic

17:13

table. Well wait, all

17:15

right, So if you're looking at your periodic table

17:17

and you try and find sodium on there,

17:20

I'll I'll give you a hint. It's on the left side.

17:22

Uh. You look at that first column. You see

17:24

that sodium is there, and it's directly

17:27

above potassium. So

17:29

here's the way the elemental table

17:32

is arranged that Chris has his out, I've got my not

17:34

already here, um, but it's arranged

17:37

so that the the when

17:39

you look at a vertical stack of elements,

17:41

those elements share similar

17:44

properties. This isn't

17:46

just arranged by weight or willy nilly.

17:48

The vertical stacks symbolize

17:51

elements that share very similar features.

17:55

Chris is trying to distract me with animation now

17:57

with his iPad. Stop it anyway.

18:01

So you've got sodium directly above potassium.

18:03

That means that sodium and potassium

18:05

share a lot of the same qualities,

18:07

but sodium is lighter than potassium.

18:10

Potassium is a larger element, so it's got

18:12

larger atoms that make that's important

18:14

because what happens is when the potassium replaces

18:17

the sodium in this salt bath, the

18:20

potassium atoms are actually

18:22

larger, and they make that

18:24

you know, they take up more space in those holes

18:26

in the net. It actually makes the material

18:28

stiffer and more resistant to

18:30

damage. UM. And that's

18:33

it's pretty interesting stuff. And the reason why this

18:35

works is because the energy

18:37

you need to break a molecular bond,

18:40

or an ionic bond in this case. UH,

18:43

the energy you need to break an ionic bond varies

18:45

depending upon the size of the atom.

18:48

You need more energy to break

18:50

the ionic bond for potassium than

18:53

you do for sodium. So if you heat

18:55

up that bath at just the

18:57

right temperature and you dip a

19:01

material like this glass that has

19:03

sodium ions in it, that heat is going

19:05

to be strong enough to break that ionic bond

19:07

and the sodium ions will will

19:09

part from the structure. UH.

19:12

Now you have to make sure that the heat is not too

19:14

high, because if it's too high, one of two things could

19:16

happen. You would prevent the potassium

19:19

ions from bonding because

19:21

the energy would be too great for them to form

19:23

an ionic bond. Or you would actually

19:25

reach the melting point of the glass itself

19:28

and the glass would melt into the bath and

19:30

you wouldn't have anything to show for

19:32

it. That that seems like it would be counterproductive

19:35

yet, right, so you have to find just the right

19:37

temperature and uh, and that's

19:39

kind of what Corning has done. Dy've they've

19:43

arranged it. So I think it's around oh four degrees

19:45

celsius, which is about seven fifty two degrees

19:47

fahrenheit for this salt bath. More or less,

19:50

it's it's it's toasty so or

19:53

molten as we often say. So

19:55

the you've got the sodium ions,

19:58

they go away, the potassium ions take their play ace.

20:00

This makes the entire structure much

20:02

more uh, stiff and resistant to damage.

20:05

You then withdraw the

20:07

the glass very carefully from the molten

20:09

bath and you let it dry and cool and

20:12

um, and then you've got this compressed

20:14

material. It's and it's compressed because those

20:17

potassium ions are larger than the sodium

20:19

ions. Um. And just

20:21

in case you're curious, sodium and potassium both

20:23

belonged to a group of elements called active

20:25

metals, and active metals are

20:28

are materials that react very strongly with

20:30

with other substances. So

20:33

that's that's the secret, right, that's

20:35

exactly the well, again, not

20:37

exactly, but that's the general process that

20:40

Corning uses in order to chemically strengthened

20:42

glass. And there are other there are other

20:44

processes out there that are similar. But

20:47

like when I was talking about the demonstration where

20:49

you had the the regular glass, the treated

20:51

glass, and the gorilla glass, the treated

20:54

glass is glass that's been has

20:56

gone through at least a similar process, but

20:58

doesn't have all the little ements that

21:00

the corning uses to guarantee

21:03

a very strong compressed material.

21:06

Yeah. I think a lot of us who who own

21:08

portable electronics that have a

21:11

glass front on it, um

21:14

probably at least at one point said, you

21:16

know to ourselves, man, glass,

21:19

that's that's gonna be difficult. And then you start

21:21

looking at things like, um, uh,

21:23

you know that now that we have the two sided

21:25

phones, you know we have glass

21:27

on more than one side of the device.

21:30

And you're starting to go, yeah, this is great, but I dropped

21:32

my phone a lot, or you know, how am I gonna How

21:34

am I gonna prevent this thing from I might put in

21:36

my pocket where my keys are? Yeah, and I

21:38

have done that. I've well, I've done that and and

21:40

had uh my phone gets scratched

21:43

up on the non glass surfaces, and you think

21:45

glass, well, it's doomed. Man, Um,

21:48

why don't they just use plastic? Well, of course, glass

21:51

is going to make the display

21:53

uh so much more vivid. Um,

21:56

it's a it's a better material to use. Uh.

21:58

So it's it's really impressive

22:01

that uh there is a material that

22:03

that works so well for that. Of course, Uh you know,

22:05

other manufacturers have their own, as

22:08

you pointed out, and other, um proprietary

22:11

methods for using glass. Um.

22:13

But yeah, I mean this is not something that you go by

22:16

yourself and add to you know, you

22:18

you can't go get a piece of grilla glass

22:20

from Corning and say, you know, I like

22:22

the glass on my you

22:24

know, on my smartphone pretty well. But I'm

22:26

pretty sure I could pry this out and put a

22:28

piece of grilla glass. And you can't. You can't just

22:31

go and do that. It's not like not like a screen

22:33

protector that you would go and buy either

22:37

a store or a third party vendor. I

22:39

mean you it's it's one of those things that gorilla

22:41

glass is something that's sold directly

22:43

to manufacturers, not to consumers.

22:46

So so who buys it? Then? Who is

22:49

using this? Big companies? So

22:51

Sony is one of them, and

22:53

they use gorilla glass on their Bravia

22:56

line of television sets. You might say, well, gosh,

22:59

why would you need this on a TV set?

23:01

Well, you know you can carry your fifty I

23:04

can give you. I can give you a few different reasons,

23:07

all right. One if you if you got kids for

23:09

one thing, for one thing. Here, here's here's

23:12

the downside to our our

23:15

our gadget revolution is

23:17

that we're training ourselves that the way

23:19

you interact with screens is that you touched

23:21

them. You don't.

23:23

Yeah, I mean there are kids who I heard

23:26

stories from parents. This is all anecdotal, I know, but

23:28

I've heard stories from parents who say their

23:30

kids become used to manipulating

23:33

things like the iPad, and they

23:35

get used to swiping their hands, and then they come up

23:37

to a television they want to change the channel, and

23:39

they put their hand against the TV and start moving

23:41

their hand around, thinking, well, this is how it works

23:43

on the iPad, so it should work here, and

23:45

it don't because that's not

23:48

the You know, the rest of us have been trained that we use

23:50

the remote control to do that. We don't

23:52

get up and change the channel. That's what we had to

23:54

do in the seventies, and we do not want to return

23:56

to those dark days. But

23:58

of course you know that children find out that

24:01

they can't go up and and you know,

24:03

manipulate the TV with the hands. They

24:05

are ignorant of the dark days of

24:07

the seventies where you had to get up and turn

24:09

a switch, or that you have to wear bell

24:11

bottoms or or these polyester suits

24:14

and listen to the beg's. They don't

24:16

I'm getting off your your your topic. Yes,

24:19

and then of course they find out like

24:22

Door the explorer friends swiper

24:24

the fox might find out that you can't swipe,

24:26

and then they go, oh, man, that's

24:29

a bummer. I have no idea what you're talking about, by

24:31

the way, that that's a quote, because don't

24:33

they tell him no swiping. I don't have a kid,

24:35

so I don't know what door they explorer anyway,

24:38

But yes, I know I can. I can say this actually

24:41

from someone who has young children.

24:43

You know, I've watched them go up and

24:45

pound on the TV. And you

24:47

know with a with a crty

24:50

you have as as

24:53

much thicker than it is with flat panel TV.

24:55

So then something like the Bravio line where

24:57

it's a flat panel display sex

25:00

you display. So

25:02

that's here, that's one. Here's two all

25:04

right, a lot of these television's people mount

25:07

them to walls. Well, if for

25:10

some reason the mounting goes wrong,

25:12

then there may be a

25:15

an accident. And you want that glass

25:17

to be strong, because one you want to preserve

25:20

the integrity of whatever the devices, and

25:22

two you don't want shattered glass

25:24

to go everywhere. Glass

25:27

needs to be a bad thing in the most households.

25:30

It feels like you're walking on broken glass. It does feel

25:32

like you're walking on broken glass, because all

25:35

right, anyway, uh

25:38

so that's the second one. Here's the third case, and

25:40

this is one that it's it's already proven

25:42

because we've seen it happen. You're

25:44

playing the Wii. You have not put

25:46

that handstrap around your wrist, and

25:49

then you swings your sword

25:51

because link needs to destroy that next

25:54

monster and it flies

25:56

out your hand and into the

25:58

screen. And because we

26:00

will get complaints if we don't mention this. You could

26:02

also do that with the one from the Sony

26:05

Move or you know, whatever prop you're

26:07

using with your Let's say that let's say you're standing

26:09

too close to the connect and you're playing the boxing game,

26:12

which I don't recommend doing that. Yeah,

26:14

use props with a connect. Yes,

26:17

that's true. You could also Yeah, you could potentially

26:19

use a prop with the connect and then the same thing

26:21

could happen. In other words,

26:23

we're swinging a lot of stuff at our televisions

26:26

these days, and as a result,

26:28

uh, there's the the chance possibility

26:31

and there's the chance that you could accidentally

26:33

lose your grip and fling something

26:35

at the TV. And so the gorilla

26:38

glass is a good way to prevent

26:40

that from ruining the television and your

26:42

day. Um. But there are other products

26:44

that also other companies that use gorilla glass.

26:46

Samsung has used it for the Galaxy Tab,

26:48

and Dell used it for the Dell Streak, and

26:51

there are lots of other ones. But the

26:53

thing is that a lot of the these these

26:55

agreements between companies are not

26:58

public knowledge, and so Gorilla

27:01

Corning cannot reveal all of

27:03

its clients because you know, they have agreements

27:05

that are secret, right, nondisclosure

27:08

exactly. They're in DA's there. So you

27:10

know, we honestly do not know which gadgets

27:12

have gorilla glass, which one stone. There are ways

27:14

to find out, but we technically do not want

27:17

to do that because we like our gadgets and don't want to

27:19

try and see if we can ruin them. So,

27:21

um, yeah, those

27:23

would be the customers. It would be the big corporations,

27:26

not Joe down the street who

27:28

wants to put a new a new

27:30

sheet of glass on his smartphone.

27:33

Um. And I'm

27:35

sure we're gonna see gorilla glass used in a lot

27:38

more applications and will

27:40

price see other competitors try to develop

27:42

similar products that have, you know,

27:44

comparable strength to gorilla glass.

27:46

And Corning isn't gonna rest on its laurels.

27:49

It's not like it's not like that company is

27:51

gonna say, oh, we found it, let's we're done.

27:53

I mean, the history of the company shows they're

27:55

all about innovation. Yeah,

27:58

and for something like glass, you might

28:00

you know, and it isn't as sexy as some of the other

28:03

or well you might not necessarily find

28:05

it as sexy as some of the other, uh

28:08

different kinds of innovation we've mentioned on this show

28:10

before, but obviously

28:12

it plays an important part and the

28:14

things that we use every day. So yeah, and

28:17

here's just a little piece of trivia. I think it's kind

28:19

of cool that doesn't deal directly with gorilla

28:21

glass, but more with the whole ion exchange

28:24

process. This is

28:26

something It sounds like it's pretty new,

28:28

like this is this is something that maybe dates

28:30

back to the sixties, you know, like that that's

28:33

when we first started figuring out how to do this ion

28:35

exchange thing. But the truth is it dates way

28:38

back earlier than that, because stained

28:41

glass uses a similar

28:43

process in which you add certain

28:45

metals to a glass mixture

28:47

in order to create the various colors.

28:50

And it's, um, it's this these metal

28:52

oxides that you add to molten

28:54

glass that gives stained glass and you know

28:56

those vibrant but like cobalt blue. It's

28:59

cobalt that's what adding to the glass

29:01

mixture in order to do it. And it's using the same

29:03

sort of process of an ion

29:05

exchange and really really hot

29:08

molten glass. So um

29:10

so yeah, this, this whole process

29:13

that that Corning is using is

29:15

something that dates back centuries. They've just refined

29:17

it to an exact science

29:21

and that's really really good for those

29:23

of us who like our gadgets unscratched.

29:26

Yes, I am one of those people. I do

29:28

not like scratching my gadgets unless

29:31

they're itchy. Alright, So on

29:33

that note, let's wrap this up, folks. If

29:35

you want to suggest a topic to us where

29:37

you have any comments about gorilla glass

29:39

or or maybe there's something related to it that

29:41

you would like to hear more about. Let us know. You

29:44

can contact us on Twitter and Facebook

29:46

are handled. There is text stuff

29:48

h s W or you can

29:51

send us an email and that address is tech

29:53

stuff at how stuff works dot com

29:55

and Chris and I will talk to you again really

29:57

soon moral

30:00

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