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Mystery of Prince Rupert's Drop at 130,000 fps - Smarter Every Day 86

SmarterEveryDay · 15.1M views · 2013-03-23 · 6:39

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Overview

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.

On Hacker News

Recommended across Prince Rupert's drop and glass threads for its striking high-speed footage.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2013–2024

Topics

Everyday physics & science demosMaterials science
Search by tags
tempered glasshigh-speed camerainternal stressslow motion

What people said

nate_meurer · 2019-03 · Strong recommendation

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 [VIDEO] . High speed video of one of these things exploding. Kinda blew my mind.

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skellera · 2023-05 · Recommendation

Shout out to Destin from SmarterEveryDay for his love of PRDs. Learn about and see how it’s made – [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)

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MiguelHudnandez · 2013-07 · Recommendation

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 [VIDEO] Smarter Every Day: cat righting itself in midair [LINK] Lots of high speed videos [LINK]

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Sources

Video by SmarterEveryDay, played through YouTube.

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