4 HN users recommended this demo4 months2013–2024score 4.5
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026
Recommended across Prince Rupert's drop and glass threads for its striking high-speed footage.
Smarter Every Day films Prince Rupert's drops, tempered glass drops, in high-speed slow motion at 130,000 fps. It shows how the drop's heavy internal stress lets the head survive hits while the tail shatters the whole thing.
“High speed video of one of these things exploding. Kinda blew my mind.” (HN, 2019)
Interesting. I love glass blowing. Maybe I'll learn about it some day. Borosilicate and aluminosilicate cookware is actually pretty tolerant of chipping, because pieces tend to be thoroughly annealed. Tempered soda-lime, on the other hand, is not, so it has tremendous internal stress that makes it much tougher than borosilicate, but once it does chip it's liable to shatter explosively. Like Prince Rupert's drops. Hey, you want to see something cool? You'll appreciate this since you work with the stuff. Go to 2 min 45 sec in the video at [this video] . High speed video of one of these things exploding. Kinda blew my mind.
High-speed footage of tempered glass drop exploding.
Also discussed and illustrated in "The Curious Properties of a Molten Glass Blob Dropped in Cold Water" [link] The story linked is just a blog wrapper on a "Smarter Every Day" episode, which is definitely worth watching. Smarter Every Day: [this video]
Smarter Every Day episode on molten glass drops, worth watching.
You'd just see some blinding white light for a few seconds and then maybe nothing else for the rest of your life. Our human eyes and brains limit us from perceiving even everyday things with the majesty they deserve. Even popping water balloons looks amazing in high speed video. On YouTube, there is a community of people doing silly things with high speed cameras that makes for stimulating watching: Smarter Every Day: weird glass phenomenon [this video] Smarter Every Day: cat righting itself in midair [link] Lots of high speed videos [link]
Example of stimulating high-speed camera videos on YouTube.
Shout out to Destin from SmarterEveryDay for his love of PRDs. Learn about and see how it’s made – [this video] Encasing a shattering drop in glass – [link] The process the team uses in the second video to freeze the break in glass is pretty awesome! (If you’re into that kind of thing)
See how Prince Rupert's drops are made, with a follow-up on freezing the break.
1. Drop molten glass in a bucket of water. 2. Let it cool down, take it out. 3. Hammer the head of the drop and it won't break. 4. Nick the thin tail and the whole thing will explode . Here's a GIF - [link] Here's the vid - [this video]
Video of Prince Rupert's drop behavior accompanying a step-by-step description.
The Smarter Every Day YouTube channel has done several high-speed videos about Prince Rupert's drops, including a couple released just last week. * 2013-03-22 [this video] * 2016-12-29 [link] * 2017-04-26 [link] * 2017-04-30 [link]
Lists several Smarter Every Day high-speed Prince Rupert's drop videos by date.
wow, I literally just had a very similar idea but what inspired me to think of it was the phenomenon of Prince Rupert's Drops [this video] I commented on the quantamagazine article but it's awaiting moderator approval
Prince Rupert's drops cited as inspiration for an idea.
The strength that those stresses add is mind boggling. Smarter Every Day[0] did a video on Prince Rupert's Drops, which have similar internal stresses, and he demonstrates their strength by shooting a drop with a .22 rifle. [0] [this video]
Prince Rupert's drops shown strong by shooting with a .22 rifle.
Unfortunately the link on the third post now seems to go to an SEO spam site, but the Web Archive seems to have the original - [link] which was a blog post featuring this YouTube video - [this video]
Original blog post featured this video; archived link provided.
> While the Superfest glass is by far more durable than normal glass, when they shatter – the burst into a million fine pieces and are a total nightmare to clean up. I’m not sure if it’s because of their potassium chloride coating or because they are made to be super thin, my advice is to not drop them. maybe the same reason [the super hard] prince rupert's drops explode. really high internal stress. [this video]
Prince Rupert's drops explode due to high internal stress.
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