In high school and college, many people who took chemistry classes may have learned that there are only four states of matter: solid , liquid, gas and plasma. Where would glass be located in these states? Most people you ask might say it's a solid, sure. You can touch it and hit it and it will not yield to your hand. It makes up our windows and protects us from bad weather, so why shouldn't it be solid? Surprisingly, the state of glass, or the transition from molten glass to more solid glass, seems to be a hotly debated topic in the scientific world. In fact, in the 125th anniversary issue of Science Magazine, which contained the top one hundred unanswered scientific questions, question 22 was: "What is the nature of the glassy state?" » and question 21 goes hand in hand: “Is superfluidity possible in a solid? » (Science, 2005). It seems that glass is a state in its own right, between liquid and solid. To understand the state of glass, we must first understand the different states of matter. All matter is composed of states and can pass through these four existing states. The solid state is where the atoms of a substance are tightly bound together, with the only movement being the vibration of the atoms. The liquid state is where atoms are placed together in no order with a defined volume, but can move in front of each other, giving them no defined shape. According to the 1926 Science Magazine article, glass exhibits characteristics of both states. It is similar to a liquid in that its atoms are randomly arranged, but it has the fixed rigid bond of a solid as well as the same high heat capacity (Science). This article in Science Magazine is a bit dated though and science changes drastically over the years, especially...... in the middle of the article...... the evidence on how strong or even how it would happen to be one. It seems that this debate is also shared between specialists. What is even more interesting is that most chemists and materials scientists seem to believe that glass is clearly an amorphous solid and have scientific facts such as the structure of amorphous solids which has long been defined. On the other hand, we see more and more physicists concluding that glass is not yet a defined state or that it is a "supercooled" liquid moving at a speed too slow to be defined . The solution to the glass transition still requires many years of research and does not seem to be possible any time soon. Glass could even be its own state outside of the four common states of matter. In the words of Dr. Harrowell, "Glass is an example, probably the simplest example, of the truly complex complexity of the environment.”.