[2021] Craft beakers

They are very much not the same thing. Attempting to use a plain glass jar for chemistry will likely leave you with a hole in your jar or a shattered jar, and a problematic mess.

More specifically, You can't just use any old sand to make a beaker the way you can for a jar. Borosilicate glass (what beakers are made of) is made from a mixture of silica and boric oxide, while glass is typically made from sand, soda ash, and limestone.

The borosilicate glass that most(not all) beakers are made of has a very low coefficient of thermal expansion, which makes it much safer to heat, and also it is chemically resistant to many things you might experiment with as far as chemistry goes. 'Normal' glass on the other hand has a tendency to react with many things you could put in it, and would, even ifit didn't chemically react, almost certainly shatter when heated directly the way you would for chemistry purposes(IE; A bunsen burner, or in 7DTD's case, a campfire.)

Originally posted by Desolator: Crafting is already worse than the stuff you can find in the wild (T5 VS T6) and is only relevant if you really want to make an entire base yourself. I don't see why we wouldn't have the option for people to make beakers if they really want to.

I think it plays an important thematic role. It drives home that you exist in a post-apocalyptic, post-civilization world. Like the Twinkies in Zombieland, there are some things from the 'before times' that just can't be made anymore, now that (one presumes) manufacturing, supply and distribution chains have shut down and so on.