Dr Tom Derrick, Gale Research Fellow in Ancient Glass and Material Culture here at Macquarie University was recently featured on ABC Kids' Imagine This podcast to talk about how ancient glass was made.

Dr Tom Derrick, who is Principal Investigator of the Ancient Glass Project (2023-2026) at Macquarie University, featured as an expert in a recent episode of ABC Kids’ Imagine This.

Imagine This is a podcast that centres around questions kids (4 to 7 years old) want to know about the world, and presenter (and physicist) Dr Niraj Lal talks with kids and Australian academics to answer them.

In this episode, Dr Tom Derrick helps answer the question, “How is glass made?” by taking listeners on an imaginative leap back through time to Egypt and Jerusalem during the period of the Roman Empire.

The museum has an excellent collection of Ancient Glass, and you can see some of the glass objects Dr Derrick describes in the podcast on display there. These include a 1.3kg chunk of ancient raw blue-green glass produced in tank oven furnaces like the one 'visited' in the episode.

The museum also has on display a number of ancient perfume bottles (known as unguentaria) and other vessels such as the square, mould-blown bottle discussed in the episode. This vessel could preserve things for long periods of time, like food and medicine (Dr Derrick talked about its transformative social power in the podcast).

The podcast episode is out now. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts:

ABC Listen: https://www.abc.net.au/kidslisten/programs/imagine-this

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6aU4CjmTcpWYPoWERbePkC?si=896a6dd7d4024bcd

Apple:  https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/how-is-glass-made/id1367299937?i=1000709171101

Contact: Macquarie University History Museum

Phone: 0298509263

Email: muhm@mq.edu.au