Showing posts with label glass. Show all posts
Showing posts with label glass. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

Beach Scenes


“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach - waiting for a gift from the sea.” - Anne Morrow Lindbergh

“The three great elemental sounds in nature are the sound of rain, the sound of wind in a primeval wood, and the sound of outer ocean on a beach” - Henry Beston

“Among the many thousands of things that I have never been able to understand, one in particular stands out. That is the question of who was the first person who stood by a pile of sand and said, "You know, I bet if we took some of this and mixed it with a little potash and heated it, we could make a material that would be solid and yet transparent. We could call it glass." Call me obtuse, but you could stand me on a beach till the end of time and never would it occur to me to try to make it into windows.” - Bill Bryson

NVDL: Bill, what probably happened - and something tells me you must have already thought of this (it just sounds cool the way you put it) - is that people discovered glass in deserts and on beaches and eventually realised: Hey, lightning did this. So if you add heat to sand you get this stuff. Not such a long walk in the park now was it? And there was a movie with a character who did stuff along those lines in
Sweet Home Alabama.