I feel like this is a shitpost but my serious answer is: salt
I'd always eyed those salt crystal lamps but they seemed kinda silly, but then I found out, you can get them carved into a big glowing stone orb and now that's my bedside table lamp and it is the most satisfying thing every single night.
Many neophytes get their start peering into the reflective surface of a polished 8-ball, a practice reflected in the popular toy
I bet a cue ball would be alright, not too much to ponder but does the trick in a pinch.
Too risky, I've heard of pondering-grade cue balls exploding and seriously injuring their users.
Acrylic is easiest if you think you'll have to ever polish scuffs out of your orb
On that note, why is thick acrylic so expensive? I guess they fuse thinner panels into thicker ones to order?
thick acrylic is cast in molds made of glass sheet, and then annealed slowly, masked and squared. when you laminate acrylic sheets it's very difficult to do it bubble free, and there's always a visible artifact where the two layers meet even with a "perfect" lamination. Additionally every sheet has a certain amount of unevenness over it's surface - sometimes over 1mm on thick cast - so getting the sheets flush to each other would compound in difficulty layer by layer. my plastic shop didn't offer that as a service no matter what the customer offered to pay because it was incredibly difficult, but maybe some better equiped fabricators could.
they DO make the real thick stuff (above 3") to order, but it's very spendy and usually requires a large minimum order quantity. you see custom acrylic used in giant aquarium walls, architecture details, things like that.
Sorry to dump a mountain of plastic talk in your post about orbs, I just so seldom get to use my expertise
