"DO NOT EAT." No matter how tempting you may find that little white packet at the bottom of your beef jerky package, it is not for human consumption. Silica gel packets are filled with tiny beads of silicon dioxide, which is the same basic material found in sand—just processed into a highly porous, granular form.
Each bead is full of microscopic pores that absorb and hold water vapor, kind of like a sponge, but on a molecular level. They don't dissolve or swell up—instead, they trap moisture inside their structure, keeping the surrounding environment dry. That's why you'll find them in packages with electronics, shoes, seaweed snacks, psychedelic mushrooms, vitamins—anything that could be damaged by humidity. They're simple but super effective little moisture magnets.
Silica gel itself was invented way back in 1919 by a chemistry professor named Walter A. Patrick at Johns Hopkins University. He originally developed it as a desiccant—a material that absorbs moisture—for use in scientific and industrial settings. But it wasn't until World War II that silica gel packets really took off, when the U.S. military used them to keep moisture out of equipment, medicines, and supplies. From there, they became a go-to solution for protecting all kinds of goods from humidity.
Writing in Scope of Work, Spencer Wright reveals the history of the stuff and "How Silica Gel Took Over the World":
…A couple decades ago there were hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs on a single mile of road, a half-hour from my house. If I lived in Brooklyn then, I could have purchased goods from those factories. They would experience few, if any, swings in temperature and pressure on their short journey from factory to home, and even if they did, their packaging probably would have let excess humidity ventilate off.
The farther you ship a product—the longer it takes to go from the factory to the customer's hands, and the more temperature and pressure cycles it experiences during that time—the more you need to control humidity inside of its airtight packaging. Silica gel is a cheap, easy, and reliable way to do so. In this sense silica gel sits alongside containerized shipping, and stretch wrap, and bills of lading: It is a technology without which we'd have a much harder time maintaining global supply chains.
Previously:
• Compilation video of weird and wonderful inventions from the past
• Popcorn ceilings, leaded gas, and other inventions that have 'done more harm than good,' according to Reddit
