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Glass is not completely solid.

2025-02-24

　　Glass is neither crystalline, nor amorphous, nor polycrystalline, nor a mixed state. The theoretical name is glassy state. The characteristics of the glassy state at room temperature are: short-range order, meaning that within a range of several or dozens of atoms, the atoms are arranged in an orderly manner, exhibiting crystalline characteristics; long-range disorder, meaning that as the number of atoms increases, it becomes a disordered arrangement, with a level of chaos similar to that of a liquid. Macroscopically, glass is also a solid material.
　　Glass is such a material. The reason for the structure of glass is that the viscosity of glass changes too rapidly with temperature, while the crystallization rate is too slow. When the temperature drops and crystallization just begins, the viscosity has already become very high, restricting the movement of atoms, resulting in this outcome. Therefore, the glassy state is similar to a solid liquid, where the atoms in the material are always in the process of crystallization.
　　Therefore, the positions of atoms in glass seem fixed, but there are still forces between the atoms that promote a tendency for rearrangement. It is not a stable state, which is different from the atomic state in paraffin. Thus, although it is also not a crystal, at room temperature, paraffin is completely solid, while glass can be regarded as a liquid with extremely high viscosity.

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