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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[...]The discovery that under certain conditions electrically-heated silicate glass defies a long-accepted law of physics known as Joule's first law should be of interest to a broad spectrum of scientists, engineers, even the general public, according to Himanshu Jain, Diamond Distinguished Chair of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Lehigh University.

[...]He and his colleagues -- which includes Nicholas J. Smith and Craig Kopatz, both of Corning Incorporated, as well as Charles T. McLaren, a former Ph.D. student of Jain's, now a researcher at Corning -- have authored a paper published today in Scientific Reports that details their discovery that electrically-heated common, homogeneous silicate glasses appear to defy Joule's first law.

[...]"In our experiments, the glass became more than a thousand degrees Celsius hotter near the positive side than in the rest of the glass, which was very surprising considering that the glass was totally homogeneous to begin with," says Jain. "The cause of this result is shown to be in the change in the structure and chemistry of glass on nanoscale by the electric field itself, which then heats up this nano-region much more strongly."

Jain says that the application of classical Joule's law of physics needs to be reconsidered carefully and adapted to accommodate these findings.

[...]The researchers believe that this work shows it is possible to produce heat in a glass on a much finer scale than by the methods used so far, possibly down to the nanoscale. It would then allow making new optical and other complex structures and devices on glass surface more precisely than before.

"Besides demonstrating the need to qualify Joule's law, the results are critical to developing new technology for the fabrication and manufacturing of glass and ceramic materials," says Jain.

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