We are all so used to seeing glass everywhere, from dishes to windows to windshields to cell phones that glass is definitely a material that is taken for granted. But do you know what glass really is? I can tell you that physicists and chemists are still debating about what the glassy state really is. Most substances that we take for granted, like table salt, are little crystals, which can easily be seen in a stereo microscope. A crystal has its atoms, in the case of table salt sodium and chlorine, arranged in an orderly fashion. Glass, typically made up of primarily silicon and oxygen atoms, has its atoms arranged in a disorderly fashion. That makes its properties quite different from those of crystals.
Glass is made, at very high temperatures, from sand, with other minor additives. In addition, exactly how molten glass is processed into its final form, regardless of its composition, will greatly affect its final properties. The Story of Glass, by Freda Diamond, describes the history of glass from ancient times up to about the 1960s or so, at a high school level. She tells the fascinating story of the origin of glassmaking in ancient times and the development of the technology of making glass, from glassblowing by hand to automated machinery. The last 60 years has seen some remarkable new uses for glass, including glass fibers that carry most of our internet signals via lasers, the very tough glass used for the cover of your cell phones, and special glass that allows touch screens to be made and used.
Materials science and engineering, which is the physics and chemistry of materials and their manufacture and use, is really important for all of our modern technology. Its history is a key part, though sometimes an unknown and unappreciated part, of political, economic, and social history. For those interested, most back issues of the Materials Research Society Bulletin, before the year 2000, have interesting articles on the history of materials and how materials can affect broader history. See https://link.springer.com/journal/43577/volumes-and-issues
One warning to any reader of this review: I am a retired physicist/materials scientist, so I may be a bit biased… However, the United States desperately needs more engineers and scientists and in particular, more materials engineers and scientists, so I make no excuses for pushing materials science and engineering!