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Glass is made chiefly of fine white sand or silica melted in a furnace. To make the sand melt easily, we must mix with it some soda, some chalk or lime, and a small quantity of broken glass.
玻璃主要由細致的白沙或硅石在熔爐中煉成。為了確保能夠輕松地將沙子融化掉, 我們必須要加入一些蘇打、白堊或石灰以及少量玻璃渣。
Have you ever seen a glass-house, or a building in which glass is made? It is generally built of bricks, in the shape of a large cone. The mixture of sand and soda is put into large melting-pots, and these are placed in the furnace or fierce fire which burns in the centre of the glass-house.
你有沒有見過玻璃工廠, 也就是生產制作玻璃的地方? 這樣的工廠一般由磚塊搭建而成, 呈巨大的圓錐形。沙子與蘇打的混合物被放入到一個龐大的熔爐中, 然后通過工廠中央炙熱的爐火進行加熱。
Soon the mixture melts and forms a white-hot liquid. To make plate-glass , this liquid is poured upon an iron table, and then rolled out just like dough with iron rollers. The hot sheet of glass is then placed in a room, where it cools very slowly indeed. This is called annealing: If the glass were cooled quickly, it would be too brittle to use.
很快, 混合物便被融化并形成白色的沸騰液體。如果要制造平板玻璃, 這些液體將被倒在一個鐵板之上, 然后使用鐵制滾子像和面那樣反復卷壓。隨后, 人們將滾燙的玻璃片放在一間廠房中, 讓它們慢慢冷卻。這個步驟叫做退火。如果玻璃冷卻過快, 就會非常脆弱而根本無法使用。
Cheaper and thinner kinds of window-glass are made by blowing. The glass-blower dips a long iron tube or blow-pipe into the melted glass, taking up a little of it on the end of the tube. He then blows this out like a huge soap-bubble, and as it begins to cool he rolls the glass - bubble on a smooth table until it becomes a cylinder. This cylinder is afterwards cut open with a diamond, and is spread out into a flat sheet after it has again been softened by heat.
更薄、更便宜的窗戶玻璃通過吹制而成。吹玻璃工人將長長的鐵管或吹管放入融化的玻璃之中, 用管子的末端沾上一點。然后, 他就開始用力吹, 很快, 融化的玻璃就會像巨大的肥皂泡一樣膨脹起來。等它開始冷卻的時候, 工人將這個玻璃泡放在平滑的桌子上反復滾動, 最后形成一個圓筒。隨后, 工人用金剛石把這個玻璃圓筒切開。接著, 經過再一次加熱后, 玻璃就會變軟, 最后變成一塊平整的玻璃片。
