Scientific glass--for beakers, test tubes and flasks--has led Corning into a small but important base in medical products.

FORBES: The Trials Of Amory Houghton Jr.

"It would coat your beakers, everything, " says Berger, known to colleagues as Beaker.

FORBES: OutFront

In Hambrecht's view consumers' and policymakers' command of chemistry is frequently limited to vague memories of exploding beakers and funny smells in a high school laboratory.

FORBES: Chemistry Lesson

In 2011 Canada made it illegal to possess or import anything (from chemicals to beakers) with the purpose of making meth or MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy.

ECONOMIST: The methamphetamine business

Beakers come to McMurdo for a variety of reasons.

ECONOMIST: The South Pole as location and metaphor

Standing silently but amiably to one side, he would unbolt the magic boxes, hold the ropes, demonstrate the emptiness of beakers and pots, confirm the thickness of a sheet of glass before a near-naked girl would climb into a magic box and pass straight through it!

ECONOMIST: Ali Bongo | The

There were green picnic tables set out beneath the shade trees full with foliage, and on this sunny weekend afternoon there were waiters in braided white coats moving swiftly about, balancing trays laden with bottles and pitchers and plates, and men of every age gathered at each of the tables, smoking cigarettes and pipes and cigars and drinking deeply from tall beakers and earthenware mugs.

NPR: Roth Rewrites History with a 'Plot Against America'