From Sand to Nand

Chapter Thirteen

"Keep spinning!" Pei yelled over the roaring thunder of the sky and of the forge.

The sky and flames complimented one another. As the rainy winds blew over the stony inputs, they stoked they fire ever louder and hotter. Even more audible were the clashes of thunder. In a spurt of personal excitement, Pei's energy had increased. "Throw more of that charcoal inside. I'll add the rocks!" he exclaimed.

In his head, he was having fun. The sound of mother nature challenging his creation even more only provoked Pei to fan the fire hotter. He had made spinning fans out of clay bowls, bamboo, and rope, so that the two girls stoking the furnace had to work minimally to increase the temperature. Several hours had passed as Pei oversaw the entire process, while the other half of his small team collected more rocks.

Finally, it was time for Pei to open the spout and let the liquid metal flow into a pot of cold water. To his disbelief, an increasingly huge amount of glowing-red material flowed down a chute barely the length of his hands. Toward the ledge, the liquid separated as it entered the pot and instantly cooled and hardened into small flakes and pebble-sized pieces. They bubbled furiously as they sank to the bottom. Then suddenly, the flow slowed, and the stream drastically grew thicker, unable to continue downward any further. It hardened into a petrified heap.

The pot that Pei used to catch the metal chunks overflowed as metal displaced the water, which crept out of the top and graciously down the sides. Once the bubbling had ceased, the fragments were safe to touch, and Pei cupped his hands as he reached in to pull out a handful.

Looking over Pei's shoulders at the shining, light-yellow fragments, the team admired their hard work. "That was barely a few bucket loads of rocks! What, like 10, maybe?" asked one girl.

Pei nodded in agreement. To his great confidence, his plan had worked very well. "Ow!" Pei jolted his wrist in pain.

"What is it?" asked the Chinese gentleman.

Pei observed the cut he sustained attempting to retrieve the petrified slump of thickened material from the spout of the forge. "It cut me."

"The metal? You mean, it's sharp?" the same girl asked.

After careful observation, Pei noticed a sharp prominence on the solid mass as it broke off and fell to the sand below. Its surface was smooth. "Did we get sand in the furnace when we put the rocks in?" he asked confusedly.

The Chinese man responded. "Oh, yeah, I got a little sand mixed with the rocks. That's not bad, is it? Is the metal ruined?"

"No, the metal is fine. It's in the pot...but this..." Pei started.

"What?" the girl asked.

"It's glass."

"Glass?" everyone asked in unison.

"I can't believe I didn't think of it before," Pei beat himself up.

When Pei didn't add anymore onto his last statement, the girl interrogated, "Think of what?"

"You make glass from heating sand," replied the Chinese man.

Pei didn't anticipate this endeavor, but it gave him confidence and many more ideas. A quick realization made him momentarily exhale, as he was tired of building with concrete. "We have to make another forge."

After nearly a week of work, Pei felt as though everything was still just beginning. He reluctantly split his team of 11 into 2 to manage each furnace, while additional hands from interested community members offered to help. Before he knew it, Pei was overwhelmed by the magnitude of ore, rocks, and sand piling up outside the furnace dwellings the builders had made for them. He also had two more furnaces built next door to focus explicitly on making glass.