Interesting Read from CMoG

Why Is Optical Fiber Flexible?

In the Innovations gallery we get many questions about all sorts of topics involving glass. One of the most frequently asked questions, in reference to optical fiber, is “How can glass be so flexible?” To answer this we will be doing a two part blog; the first to figure out why things bend at all, and the second to find out why things break, or don’t break, when bending.

Asking why fiber bends so much is a really good question because most of us have never seen glass bend. We know glass to be rigid and brittle, to break with very little impact. We think of bottles and windows and light bulbs, none of which bend in any noticeable way without breaking.