Why laboratory equipments are made up of glass?
Lab equipment needs to meet several criteria, firstly it needs to withstand a wide range of temperatures (both cold and hot) as reactions must be carried out under various conditions, secondly it needs to be inert so as not to effect the results of the experiment, or worse suffer structural failure as a result of reacting with the chemicals. Thirdly it needs to be transparent as looking down into the container is not always safe (many reactions can give off gasses which are harmful when they enter the eye). Thinking of those two alone it becomes fairly easy to see that other classes of chemicals rarely possess both of these attributes. Metals meet the first criteria rather well but will readily react with both acids and bases along with oxygen etc, They are also usually opaque. Plastics typically fail to meet either of the first two criteria, they can be dissolved or react with a wide variety of chemicals and often become brittle in cold or melt when hot. Although many are transparent,
