We were talking about foulgerites at the last amateur
radio club meeting and you can touch them. They are probably
prickly like volcanic rock since they are glass made of fused
sand so, unless you stepped on one in your bare feet, they are
probably not particularly dangerous. I am guessing that they
need to be handled gently both to protect your hands and to keep
from breaking off small pieces. There are different grades of
glass out there. The glass made of exactly the right kind of
sand and melted in controlled furnaces and allowed to cool
slowly is very durable. They make laboratory and cooking vessels
out of that and it is really hard to break. Cheap glass like
they make beer bottles out of along with other cheep glassware
will sometimes break if you look at it wrong, just kidding, but
it breaks easily. That stuff comes from poor quality raw
materials and is not handled well as it is made. You sometimes
find air bubbles in it and it sometimes will just break when
nobody's doing anything to it. Foulgarites are just whatever
sand happened to be under the lightning bolt when it struck so
it wasn't made with too much patience.
In another life, I might have been a glass blower
because it is really interesting stuff.
example, that it is technically not a solid but is a
super-cooled liquid?
Where I work, we use fiber optic glass that is so pure
that you could fill the Pacific Ocean with it and supposedly see
all the way to the deepest part.
This glass will carry your internet and phone traffic
about 50 miles before it has to be amplified again.
Well, today is sort of bitter-sweet. I am turning 63 in
about an hour if you want to be really picky. My birth
certificate says I was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma at 9:50. In 1951,
that would have been Central Standard Time as Oklahoma and many
other states in the Midwest and South didn't observe Daylight
Saving Time. Since we do, the official time that actually
matches is 10:50.
I just don't know where it has all gone. Most of it has
been really great and I don't have anything to complain about
especially when I think of how so many others live in this
world. I will either retire on January 2 of next year or I am
looking at a couple of other jobs but the chances of those are
fairly slim. Any way you cut it, I will be leaving my present
job around the end of October and it is kind of scary. I hope I
am not making a big mistake.
Until later,
Martin
"Stores, Mary A." writes:
> Mmm, no thanks for me. knowing my luck, it'd be an instant trip to a
> hospital.
>
> Mary
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [email protected]
> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Melissa Wobschall
> Sent: Monday, August 11, 2014 2:34 PM
> To: 'Just Chat; Where Anything Goes ... Almost!'
> Subject: RE: Sprights and other electrical disturbances
>
> Wow, a folgerite. I'll have to keep that in mind. If people collect
> them to examine them, I wonder how they can pick them up without breaking
> them.
> I imagine that, if you are gentle enough, you could touch one, but I
> wonder how sharp the edges are.
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