The life of glass bottles starts with gathering of the raw material, called silica, that can be found as quartz sand.
Quartz, the crystalline form of silicon dioxide, is an abundant mineral appearing in many forms and colors.
Quartz sand is used in making glass. It is melted with soda (sodium carbonate), or potash or lead, and the glass varies in hardness according to the minerals added.
Silica glass or quartz glass does not have the properties of a crystal - it does not cleave, nor from crystal faces, no show other of differences in properties in different direction.
The quartz sand is fed into a furnace for melting: sometimes small amounts of other materials are added to change the properties of the glass. The temperature is approximately 1500° C
Once the glass is melted in the furnace, the next step is to pour gobs of the liquid glass into a mold, where the glass will be shaped by mechanical action or compressed air into its final form as bottles.
It is not known exactly when glass bottles were first used for carbonated beverages, but it is known that they were being used for packaging champagne early in the 18th century.
Quartz glass bottle
