Glass manufacturers make glasses by melting ingredients and cooling the melt so quickly that crystals cannot form. We call the foremost common quite glass, which is employed to form bottles or window panes, soda-lime-silica glass. People have manufactured similar glasses since Roman times. Soda-lime-silica glasses typically contain about and. Raw ingredients are usually the minerals quartz trona and calcite within the United States, we obtain high-quality quartz and calcite from many places. Most of the trona comes from the Green Formation in Wyoming, where trona beds are up to 9 m (30ft.) thick. Manufacturers heat the mineral ingredients to between 1,550 and , producing a homogeneous melt; and escape into the atmosphere. Quenching, to supply a final glass, is completed in various ways counting on the merchandise wanted.
Manufacturers change glass properties by adding small amounts of other ingredients. The addition of boron produces heat-resistant glass like Pyrex® or Vycor®. Lead gives glass the optical properties needed for creating imitation crystals. Aluminum can make glass immune to weathering. Fluorine makes glass opaque. Lithium reduces the freezing point of glass.
Trace amounts of metals change glass color: Iron makes glass green, nickel makes it brown or orange, and cobalt makes it blue.