Limestone Products
What is glass made of?
Your window, your bottles, and every solar panel.
Dr. Lime Explains
A window is mostly sand.
Sand needs enormous heat to melt, so soda ash is added to bring that temperature down. That creates a problem: glass made only of sand and soda dissolves in water. A window made of it would slowly wash away in the rain.
Lime is the third ingredient. It holds the structure together and makes the glass stable.
This is why the material is called soda-lime glass. Almost every window, bottle and jar in the world is made of it.
Worth knowing
Solar panels need a special version of this glass. The panel only works if light reaches it, and iron blocks light. So solar glass is made with limestone that has almost no iron in it. That faint green edge you see on ordinary glass is iron.
Source: Corning Museum of Glass.
