How is a glass bottle made?

Answer

Bottles are made a variety of ways, most contemporary commercial glass bottles are 'mold blown' or 'pressed'. simplistically, silica sand and additives for strength and color are heated to above 1,000 degrees Farenheit, until the sand melts, and becomes fluid, this is molten glass. It is then blown into a balloon-like shape on the end of a tube. In commercial mold blown and pressed glass applications, this 'balloon' of glass is blown inside a bottle-shaped mold of two, three or more pieces, depending on the complexity of the design. The mold is then placed in an annealing oven, to cool very very slowly, so the glass doesn't shatter from the strain of sudden temperature change (remember putting marbles in boiling water, then ice water to make them crackle?). that is the basic process, mechanisation has made it possible to produce thousands of bottles at a single facility in a day.

As an interesting side note, glass is always fluid, so even though it seems solid, it is always flowing, slooooooowly. Next time you are in a very old house with original window panes, look at the glass at a close angle and see if you can't see that the pane is thicker at the bottm than the top.

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