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by Casey Nyvall PR & Collections Intern July is the month of beaches and long hot days. And, sea glass! In case you are unfamiliar with it, this is sea glass:  Sea glass! These vibrant ocean rocks are gorgeous—but how are they made? When it comes to the creation of sea glass, the process seems straightforward. But underneath, there is an enigmatic transformation. Let me take you on the journey. Close your eyes, imagine you are at the beach, with a glass bottle of juice. Imagine you finish your juice, and place it next to you on the sand while you look at the ocean. Then, when the tide comes again, it takes your empty bottle. Open your eyes. What do you think happens next? You're right if you guessed a chemical process called oxidation. During oxidation, salt water shifts the chemical makeup of the bottle's glass. If the bottle you lost were to roll against your flip-flop on the same beach, years later, it would likely look something like the bottle on the right:  Before and after; two once-identical bottles, but the right bottle has been oxidized and the left has not. These Cold Spring Harbor Company bottles were initially the same. However, the left bottle has only been affected by the passage of time on land, while the right bottle spent years in the tumultuous ocean waves. This resulted in the glass's drastic modification, from clear with a tinge of green-blue to something nearly unrecognizable, cloudy and pale. This is generally what occurs when sea glass forms; instead of whole bottles, it often sands down the edges of broken glass or bottle shards, making pieces appear more like stones when they wash up on shore. After glass undergoes oxidation, it can become discolored and opaque; this is how the colorful tones develop in sea glass pieces found on the beach. Additionally, salt water can alter the texture of glass. Who can say what these pieces from the museum collections might look like if they underwent oxidation, like the bottle in the image above!  An amber flask that has found a home in the museum collections.  An olive green bottle, also from the museum collections. (You can find more images of items held in the museum by looking on our collections page.) There are other names for sea glass, such as beach glass, mermaid tears, and pirate glass. Pirate glass is a specific type of sea glass. Pieces of it are especially dark in color, but under bright light, a lighter hue becomes visible. Along with multiple names for the pieces themselves, the sea glass collecting community has their own terminology for the many different aspects of finding sea glass. My favorite is “seaglunking.” It is the colloquial term meaning to go searching for sea glass. To me, the phrase really captures the playful nature of hunting for sea glass on the shore. Today, sea glass is commonly seen in the form of jewelry! Now that we have the environmental awareness of the 21st century, sea glass is either found on the shore, made from bottles and glassware that accidentally enter the ocean, or is crafted artificially by inundating glass with salt water and sand, and even acidic chemicals.  Sea glass jewelry! Part of what is so beautiful and entrancing about sea glass is that each piece, each bottle or fragment of a bottle, is a fragment of someone’s story we will never really know. This gives sea glass an air of mystery that, when coupled with legends of creatures in the sea, contributes to public perception of the sea as an unknown in human history. The lost stories behind sea glass are a manifestation of how much we still don’t know about the world—and each other. Further reading:
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