Cobalt Blue glass
Made with Cobalt oxide (CoO). A transparent color.
One of the strongest colorants in glass: tiny amounts produce deep blue. Cobalt glasses need more energy to melt and cool noticeably faster than most colors; at high saturation they work stiff, which is why some suppliers blend in extra flux specifically to soften cobalt's working range.
Why every color also needs to physically match
Chemistry sets a glass's color; physics decides whether it can actually be combined with other colors. Every glass has a Coefficient of Expansion (COE): how much it expands when heated and contracts when it cools. The number is in units of 10⁻⁷ per °C: COE 104 means 104 × 10⁻⁷ per °C, which is 10.4 parts per million per °C. If two colors in the same piece have different COEs, they pull against each other as the whole thing cools after being worked, building up internal stress. That stress shows up as cracking, sometimes immediately and sometimes weeks later, and it happens regardless of how well the colors chemically get along. This is separate from a color's chemistry: a compatible COE match doesn't guarantee a nice color combination, and a great color combination is worthless if the COEs don't match. Common named systems include COE 104 (soft lampworking glass, with long working time and the most color variety), COE 96 and COE 90 (fusing systems), and COE 33 (borosilicate, high-temperature). The specific number for any given colored rod depends on its manufacturer's formulation, not the colorant family alone, so this app doesn't assign COE numbers per color for that reason, and neither should you without checking the actual supplier data for the glass in hand.