toodeep wrote:
Definitely a matter of speed, since most people think of glass as a solid, when it is technically a liquid. It's just that its a very slow liquid, to the point that for most common purposes it acts like a solid.
This isn't quite on-topic; just figured since the pitch-drop experiments are all making news right now... and I failed to see the other responses about this.Sort-of. Its much like pitch. Glass (and pitch) behave as solids at most normal temperatures. Hit them with something hard and they shatter. However, give them enough time and they will flow as a liquid does (look up the various pitch drop experiments; some have never recorded a single drop, others are up in the range of 6 drops in 100 years). Glass, unlike pitch, does not flow on a fast enough time-scale to even perform those experiments. The most recent estimate I've seen indicates in the range of a billion years for glass to flow enough to have a 'drop' form. (The whole, old windows are thicker because glass isn't solid, is a bit of a myth. They were outright crafted thicker due to less perfected craftsmanship.)
Basically, most solids form a crystalline matrix of some sort. These types of substances (glass and pitch being the most common) do not form such a matrix when 'solid'. This is why they can flow; albeit slowly (on human time-scales).
In short, for most purposes I would consider glass a solid. A better example might be a thinner fluid of that type (molasses comes to mind, although I suspect its not the exact same type of thing). I suppose an Elorri might use a 'water' spell with glass as the subject, but personally, I would just treat that as an earth attack.