Glass!

Hey guys, it's Adventure Van here with a blog about glass, that little noticed thing that you're seeing this post thru right now. But what if it didn't exist? What do you think would've happened in a world where glass didn't let light thru? If you said/thought that'd we'd just continue without skyscrapers and windows, you'd be wrong.

Before I continue that thought, let's look at how glass was invented. Glass was invented by: A, a lighting strike, B, a very fearsome punch, or C, some bored Egyptians baking bread? While there's no definite answer, most historians believe that the correct one is C. However it was found, it was circulated around Egypt, some of it ending up in King Tut's Tomb! It was then taken by the Romans who experimented with it to begin making it stronger and bigger.

Glass was important with plenty of things, but some of the most needed things it was used for were mirrors, that completely changed art and our self images as we knew them, telescopes and microscopes, which allowed us to place our self in the world, screens, which allowed us to make TVs and smart phones, and just giant panes of glass, which we use for skyscrapers today.

Some misconceptions about glass are: it being a slow moving liquid, it being made perfectly clear, that glass and plastic are easily interchangeable, and that glass acts like a magnifier in one piece. The actual truths: builders put panes in upside down so that there was less weight at the top, it took years to perfect clearness, glass and plastic are not interchangeable as they have separate chemical compounds that changes the amount of light absorbed, and glass needs 2 or more pieces in order to magnify.

Now, if we didn't have glass, we wouldn't have started with the Egyptians having glass, meaning the Romans wouldn't have had it and experimented with it, creating early structures, and we also wouldn't have the mirror, which would have completely changed the Renaissance's  view of the human body.

We also wouldn't have Galileo's and other such scientists discoveries because of the missing components of telescopes. We'd also fall sick to preventable diseases because we wouldn't be able to examine and find cures for them because of the lack of microscopes. On the same note, we also wouldn't be able to prove atoms and cells, completely changing scientific history. Not having glass would've completely changed things from the point where the Egyptians found it. Makes you look at it differently, doesn't it?

That's Adventure Van, signing out.