17 June

I have a passion for glass. It’s magic, invisible as air, but solid. And as a materials scientist knowing about it was my initial training. There’s a secret about glass, next paragraph. The thing about glass is, it’s mostly sand. Silicon. And silicon is central to life throughout history. Right now it’s not only what creates the screen you’re possibly reading this through, but the chips that run your device are also made of silicon. Sand. It’s one of the oldest and newest technologies we have, at the same time. The secret about glass is that nobody really understands how it works. It’s beautifully clear and smooth, but its structure really isn’t. It’s a mess. We’ve been making glass for thousands of years, but to this day nobody really understands how it works. It’s not really a solid or a liqud, it’s a category of its own. Glass. Silicon is also what solar panels are made out of. Sand. Turned into electricity, by sunlight. That’s miraculous. It’s also what the data in your broadband travels through, tiny fibres of glass wire. Fibre optics. You may be looking at this screen through lenses - glasses - like me. Also silicon/sand. Lenses revealed the distant universe and the microscopic world. Using melted sand. Silicon is the second most abundant element in our solid materials, after oxygen. An incredibly smart thing to centre your new economy on. Unlike filthy fossil fuels dug and sucked out of old bogs. The time for dumb is over.