Say hello to Prince Rupert’s Drop – an object that resembles a tear drop. This object is quite a wonder and is made from glass.
It is created by pouring molten glass into cold water.
The reaction imparts some really cool properties to the final product. If you try hammering the head, you’ll find out that it is almost next to impossible to break it.
However, merely tweaking the tail results into the whole object exploding into a million pieces of glass.
Why?
This is achieved thanks to the compressive and tensile stresses. Once the glass is dropped into the water, the outer layers loses temperature and cools down while the core remains hot. The outer layer shrinks once it cools down and take a solid shape.
Once the glass core begins to cool down, the molecules have no place to shrink into since the exterior has already taken shape. The end result? They pull towards one another and generate high tension within the bulb, subsequently hardening into a solid mass. The tension is released when the tail is tweaked even slightly and causes a flow of energy throughout the object that causes it to explode.
The experiment by SmartEveryDay will show you some amazing shots of this explosion in slow-mo.
