Q. I was looking on eBay for carnival glass and I found a couple of items that strongly resemble the bowl I have. I have had it for 50 years, and before that it belonged to my great-grandmother. I do not know a thing about this bowl and there are no markings. It is green with a white edge, and I was wondering if it had monetary value.

A. The Internet can be a great place to do research, but those who are looking for answers must know the proper questions to ask, and that is not always easy. In addition, many times the answers provided by the Internet are just plain wrong, and your major problem in making online inquiries was that you were looking in the wrong places. Her glass bowl is not carnival glass.

Just for fun, we did a Google search for ''carnival glass'' and found a Web site that claimed to be an authority on antiques (we will withhold the name). Among other things, this site claimed that carnival glass is a ''generic name for iridescent pressed glass'' -- right so far -- ''produced by Louis Comfort Tiffany.'' Which is wrong, wrong, wrong.

The site said that carnival glass was first produced by the Fenton Glass Co. in 1907, and that is correct. But Louis Comfort Tiffany never made carnival glass.

True, Tiffany did perfect a method for producing iridized art glass, as did Steuben, Loetz in Austria and others. But these were high-end products meant to be expensive when they were new. Carnival glass, on the other hand, is pressed glass that is iridized with a chemical spray. It was cheap when it was new, and was given away as prizes at carnivals -- thus the name.

Opalescent glass, which is the proper name for your bowl, predates carnival glass by a number of years. ''Opalescent glass'' is defined as any colored or clear colorless piece of pressed or blown glass that has a milky haze in the body, mainly running around the top or in conjunction with the decoration.

While the opalescence is achieved by adding arsenic to the glass batch, this does not make the finished glass toxic in any way. This type of glass was first made in England in the 1870s and was popular in the United States around the turn of the 20th century and later.

There are some patterns of opalescent glass that were also made in carnival glass, and some carnival glass can be opalescent (such as ''peach opalescent carnival glass''). The main difference between the two glasses is that carnival glass has an iridized surface while opalescent glass does not.

The pattern on your bowl is called ''Many Loops,'' and it was made by the Jefferson Glass Co. of Steubenville, Ohio, and Follansbee, W.Va., as its pattern No. 247. It can be found in clear colorless, blue and green.

Opalescent glass is relatively inexpensive, but some patterns -- such as ''Alaska,'' ''Inverted Fan and Feather'' and ''Everglades'' -- can sell at a premium. Unfortunately, ''Many Loops'' has only a limited following, and a bowl such as this has an insurance replacement value of $40 to $60.

Send questions to: Treasures in Your Attic, P.O. Box 27540, Knoxville, TN, 37927, or e-mail treasures@knowlogy.net.