Chemists' glass made at UNL
By John Kalkcwski
The intricate glass tubing which
chemistry students rely on for experi
ments and which often amazes visitors,
is not purchased in a five-and-ten store.
Instead, two craftsmen produce these
glass products in a basement room of
Hamilton Hall.
: Lloyd Moore and Tim Grauar work as
a team on many of the projects in the
glass-blowing lab. According to Moore,
Grauar specializes in working with
metals and glass, while he (Moore) does
general glass-blowing work.
"But each professor has a different
project," Moore said. The two often find
it necessary to combine their talents on
the projects, he said.
According to Henry Baumgarten,
chairman of the Chemistry Dept., the
giass-blowing lab, along with the
electronic technicians and machinists,
help make the chemistry experiments
possible. He added that glass-blowing is
a field which requires considerable skill
and experience.
Not large field
But the glass-blowing field is not a
large one. Grauar estimated that there
are about 550 scientific glass blowers in
the United States.
He said scientific glass blowers differ
from creative glass blowers because
they often have more experience and
because they rotate the glass while they
heat it in the flame.
According to Moore, rotation is
important because the glass becomes
semiliquid and handles differently than
when it is solid. The rotation must be
consistent to keep the glass from
After heating the glass to a tempera
ture of between 1,000 degrees C. and
3,000 degrees C, depending on the type
of glass, Grauar said, the glass can be
formed either by breath or by hand.
Besides the regular glass items,
Moore said they must form complex
vacuum lines and distilling heads as
part of their work.
Glass type depends
The type of glass used is dependent
on how it will be used in experiments,
Grauar said.
He showed a small one by one and
one-half inch by one-eighth inch piece of
quartz glass which was to be used as a
lens for a laser. He said that the small
piece costs $22 because it is high quality
glass.
Both Grauar and Moore have glass
blowing shops at home where they do
creative work and repair work of broken
items such as cocktail glasses.
Moore started glass-blowing when he
was a chemistry major at Kansas
University. Glass-blowing started as a
part-time job at KU for Moore. After he
learned the basics, it became a career.
Moore has been in glass-blowing for
18 years and has spend 15 years at UNL.
When he first came to UNL, the
glass-blowing lab was a one-man
department.
In 1968, Moore was joined in the lab
by Grauar. Grauar had learned glass
blowing at Los Angeles Junior College.
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Glass Menagerie
I9th &
page 2
daily nebraskan
thursday, december 12, 1974