SmarterEveryDay
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2013–2024
6:39 · 15M views · Mar 23, 2013
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.
Recommended across Prince Rupert's drop and glass threads for its striking high-speed footage.
10 comments from Hacker News
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.
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]
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)
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
> 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