Transparent wood may be the strangest building material you have never heard of, and it could soon be sitting in your window frame. Researchers have learned to take an ordinary plank, strip out the substance that makes it brown, and turn it into a pane you can see through, one that insulates far better than the glass we have leaned on for three thousand years.
The idea sounds like a party trick. Wood is the definition of opaque; blocking light is practically its job. Yet the same fibers that hold up a tree can let daylight pour through if you remove one stubborn ingredient and replace it with something clear. What remains is a material that keeps the strength of timber, refuses to shatter like glass, and slows the escape of heat that drains so much energy from our buildings.
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