Why glass is hard and plastic soft?

Glass is made of many small molecules firmly bonded together, and the bonds between them will not stretch significantly. If submitted to sufficient force, they will break. These properties make glass hard, but brittle.

Transparent plastics, on the other hand, are polymers made by loosely bonding together very large molecules. The bonds are not very strong, so the molecules will slide over each other, making plastics flexible.

 

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