Making of a Tektite

Contemporary Glass Artist, Josh Simpson, creates a blown meteorite sculpture Tektite in his home studio, www.megaplanet.com. Video produced by John Suchocki through MassLive.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Glassblowing
• meteorite
• space
• josh
• simpson
• tektite
• art
• sculpture
• megaplanet
• molten
• glass
• recycled
• contemporary

[Dierwolf2000]

@RodCornholio

well the tektite in that kiln is no more naturally formed than the soda lime glass used in the rest of the hotshop im sure. he probably just used the spectrograph results to form a batch recipe.

[Dierwolf2000]

i'd very much like to spin out a platter of this tektite material too.

[Dierwolf2000]

@recorderdevoix

depending on its size, what they do is pulverize it to powder and expose to radio waves. the return signals are washed through some heavy duty geologist's math (that most get the formulas for out of their textbooks)  and they can discern the mineral content from there.

[chopppacalamari]

We send our saphires over to house of jems. I trust them.

[Dierwolf2000]

I want to do the same analysis with some obsidian and blow it out in similar fashion. anybody know where i can get such an analysis done?

[recorderdevoix]

That is really cool (or should I say hot) I've bought some tektite in Bangkok from the "House of Gems". The place looks legit, but Thailand is known for its fake gems industry, so I don't really know. The tektite looks real, but I'd like to test it somehow.

[HawtGlass]

don't lose the mustache!

[RodCornholio]

What is interesting to think about is in its molten form, you are seeing it probably VERY close to what the tektite looked like as it hurled through the atmosphere perhaps millions of years ago. Almost like a time machine.

[LaMortadella]

What a beautiful and exotic end product.  Who knew you could simulate tektite?

[seabird1799]

Great video! I have a small planet and get lost in it quite often.