Visiting MIT Glass lab
By Dingfang Zhou
A group of high school students and their MIT student mentors attended the workshop in MIT glass lab. The workshop is initiated by Amphibious Achrivement, a MIT student-run service organization and is aimed at introducing the high school students in Amphibious Achievement to new applications of science and math.
States, one of the mentors led the group walking across the “Inifite Corridor” in MIt Building #4. When arriving the glass lab, Patrick Barragan, instructor of the day has already waited outside the lab. He handed each visitors protective goggles and gave a brief introduction of the glass lab.
“I made this one,” said Barragan, pointing at a transparent glass vase with white stripes on the body, which was placed on top of the shelf in the display case outside the studio. He has been working in the glass lab for 7 years since his first year in graduate school in MIT.
“I went to the lottery and got really lucky. The first time I went I got in and I have been doing it ever since,” said Barragan. Glass blowing has been one of the most popular extra curricular activities on campus. Getting into the glass lab is almost as hard as getting into MIT itself.
Before entering the lab, he told the students: “If you don’t know specifically if something is hot. Assume it is. The floor is basically safe to walk.”
His colleagues in the lab were busy making a glass pumpkin together which will be sold at a fund-raise later. One of the crew dipped a metal pole with a molten blob on top into the furnace, and then pull the pole out and dipped the blob into a cement mode in order to give the glass pumpkin shape. Next, he gave a gentle blow at the other end of the pipe to puff the blob. After coloring, adjusting the shape and adding a vine, the glass pumpkin was put into a cooling cabinet for a night.
Peter Houk, director of glass lab dips the metal pole into the furnace and get some molten blob on top of the pole. The blob is dripping into a tube with cold water underneath for the annealing process. (photo by: Yaoming Duan)
A glass lab staff is blowing air into the glass pumpkin, which will be sold at a fund-raise later. (photo by: Yaoming Duan)
After the glass pumpkin demo of making glass pumpkin, one of the students volunteered to join with Barragan and Peter Houk, director of glass lab, for the “annealing” process-- a process of slowly cooling hot glass to relieve internal stresses after it was formed. Houk made two glass columns, one annealed and the other not. The student could easily break the latter with bare hands, however, he could not break the annealed glass even with a hammer.
Workshop participant broke the glass column with bare hands under the instruction of Houk. (photo by: Yaoming Duan)
Workshop participant tried to break the annealed glass with a hammer. (photo by: Yaoming Duan)
“It’s because of the stress,” said Houk. Annealing glass will increase its durability since the glass retains many of the stresses inside and becomes durable.
Then, each students got a chance to involve in glass production process such as glass blowing and shaping. The glass lab workshop is “once-in-a-life-time opportunity, even for MIT student,” said Michael Lu, a sophomore student who is also the mentor of Amphibious Achievement.
A high school girl blows air into a glass blob at the other end of the metal pole. (photo by: Yaoming Duan)
The glass lab workshop is “once-in-a-life-time opportunity, even for MIT student,” said Michael Lu, a sophomore student who is also the mentor of Amphibious Achievement. (photo by: Yaoming Duan)
“They(students) seem really interested and they seem engaged. I’m glad that all of them got to interact with glass physically so that they can see the importance of that physical interaction. MIT ‘Mens et Manus’ (‘Mind and Hand’) type of model is always important. Not only you are learning things but you can also working with them and trying do it yourself so you can really get a solidified understanding,” said Barragan after the workshop.
“They(students) seem really interested and they seem engaged,” said Patrick Barragan, the instructor of the MIT glass lab. (photo by: Yaoming Duan)