Many Missourians have long associated glass
blowing with artisans who populate Silver Dollar City. Now, students at the
University of Missouri-Rolla can watch glass blowing — and practice it
themselves — on
campus.         

Dr. Richard Brow, Curators’ Professor of
ceramic engineering at UMR, wants the new Hot Glass Shop to be a place where
students can discover connections between art and science. “We plan to use the
aesthetic appeal of glass to help teach materials science,” Brow
says.         

UMR is internationally known for glass science
and materials research. Dr. Delbert Day, Curators’ Professor emeritus of
ceramic engineering at UMR, is one faculty member who has developed new
applications for glass, including the treatment of liver cancer with tiny,
radioactive glass
spheres.                       

Mary Reidmeyer, a research associate professor
in UMR’s materials science and engineering department, emphasizes that you
don’t have to be Louis Armstrong to blow the glass. “It only takes a couple of
puffs,” she says.

In 1985, Day founded Mo-Sci Corp., a world
leader in glass precision technology. Recent donations from the Mo-Sci
Foundation helped make the Hot Glass Shop at UMR a
reality.         

UMR’s shop has many of the same capabilities
as the glass blowing outfits at Silver Dollar City. The glass is created by
heating mixtures of sand, soda ash and limestone. The Hot Glass Shop has a
crucible furnace that holds 200 pounds of molten glass at 2,100 degrees
Fahrenheit. Using a blow pipe, the molten glass is pulled from the furnace and
formed into different
shapes.         

Mary Reidmeyer, a research associate professor
in UMR’s materials science and engineering department, emphasizes that you
don’t have to be Louis Armstrong to blow the glass. “It only takes a couple of
puffs,” she
says.         

As the molten glass starts to cool, its
viscosity goes up and it can be shaped by rolling the blow pipe. But if you let
it cool too fast, Reidmeyer cautions, the piece will lose its desired
shape.         

“If you get it too hot or too cold, you might
start with a bowl and end up with a plate,” Reidmeyer
says.          

Glass blowers like Reidmeyer carefully re-heat
and re-shape their work-in-progress, adding in colored pieces of crushed glass
as they go.         

A skilled glass blower can usually get the
shape right, but part of the beauty of the process is that it’s not totally
predictable. “You never know exactly how the colors are going to come out,”
Reidmeyer says. “There are a lot of happy
surprises.”         

The Hot Glass Shop at UMR will be formally
dedicated at 3:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 7, in Fulton Hall on campus. The event is
being held to recognize and thank the Mo-Sci Foundation for its
support.         

Nate Wyckoff, a Ph.D. candidate who is writing
his dissertation on novel optical glasses, will give a demonstration of glass
blowing during the dedication. Wyckoff trained as a glass blower while pursing
an undergraduate degree in ceramic engineering at Alfred University in New
York.