As I sat in the library today working on a very important research paper for a very important math class (which I need to pass in order to graduate this Spring), I was struck by a profound question:

Why aren't toasters see-through?

And a big "YES" to all of you smarty-pants out there: I do know what a toaster oven is. But I'm talking about a true-blue toaster here.

Wouldn't it be great if instead of playing toast roulette every morning you could actually see how brown your toast is at any given moment? For a moment, I thought that my epiphany was going to make me a millionaire.

Alas, somebody beat me to the punch. Actually, a few people beat me to the punch: I found a bunch of transparent toasters on Amazon (damn you, Jeff Bezos).

But this still didn't answer my question: Why aren't these nifty contraptions mass-produced? Why aren't they in every kitchen across the world? After some a ton of research, I think I've found the answer:

Toasters are hot and glass doesn't respond well to heat.

Huh? Think of it this way: when you put your toast into a toaster, you're putting it between two walls that are each wrapped in thin metal wires. When you plug in your toaster, the electrical current coming from the socket in the wall of your kitchen (or bathroom or bedroom, we don't judge) runs through these thin wires. And as we all know, according to Ohm's First Law:

Electricity + Metal Wires = Hot

And the hot (which I believe is the scientific term for it) coming off of those metal wires radiates onto your bread (at about 600 degrees Celsius), magically turning a once soft and doughy slab of cooked yeast and flower into a much more dry, messy slab of cooked yeast and flour (side note: why the hell do we like toast so much?).

So why does any of this matter? Well according to the Royal Academy of the Sciences (just kidding, I used Wikipedia), the glass-transition temperature (aka the temperature at which glass goes from hard and brittle to soft and malleable) for most common types of glass is less than 600 degrees Celsius. In laymen's terms, as is stated in Ohm's Second Law:

Glass + Hot = Melted Glass

So by substituting Ohm's first law into Ohm's second law, we find:

Glass + Electricity + Metal Wires = Melted Glass

Which leads us to Ohm's Third Law:

See-through Toaster + Melted Glass = Broken Toaster = FIRE! = Unhappy customer

And there you have it: we don't have transparent toasters because Cuisinart is too scared to burn down a few homes for the betterment of mankind.

Tsk tsk tsk!