Yeah its not really what it looks like though. They put cylinders of soft metal in place of where you would expect the press to have hardened steel.
aragonite 2 days ago [-]
Has this been confirmed? The original channel also posted a comparison video [1] showing what seems to be the same cylinders tested against titanium and tungsten cubes (though it's difficult to be sure they are identical)
There's also footage from another channel [2] showing a Prince Rupert's Drop bursting at 20 tons with significant damage to both the steel plate and the press.
You can see the steel deforming - definitely soft steel.
darkwater 3 days ago [-]
When was this article written? Last update is 2023 (so the title should at least reflect this) but down in the article talks about Gorilla glass by Corning as a novelty with possible future uses in smartphones.
Sent from a Gorilla glass smartphone with a corner almost broken ^^;
dragontamer 2 days ago [-]
Prince Rupert's Drop is strong at compression but weak enough that your pinky finger can shatter it.
These 'hardness' stats are just marketing bullshit dressed up in barebones material science. They know most people haven't studied material science or understand what 'hardness' means.
jccalhoun 3 days ago [-]
youtube says the mythbusters video is from 10 years ago so it was written sometime since then.
darkwater 3 days ago [-]
And according to Wikipedia [1] the first commercial use of Gorilla Glass was the original iPhone in 2007, even if the name was officially coined in 2008
It reminds me of Cory docotorow's comment of something like 'there are 5 social media sites and everything is just copied from one another'
HN isn't immune either, given that karma provides 'rights to punish views and accounts' (downvoting). And it makes a great strategy to make a whole lot of socks with 520 karma, and selectively kill comments and stories you don't want.
actuallyalys 3 days ago [-]
I’m sure sock puppets and voting rings play a role, but “this link was interesting to a bunch of people on sites with some overlap in interests and demographics” seems a simpler and better explanation.
dyauspitr 3 days ago [-]
The best part is if you melt away the weak tail, all you’re left with is the strong bulb.
tifik 3 days ago [-]
Would/does that actually work? Its been a while since I watched SED Destins video about it, so I dont remember if they experiment with that. But intuitively, heating the glass so non-uniformly that the tail would melt and the bulb remained solid enough to keep the internal stresses intact, wouldnt that steep temperature gradient within the crystaline structure cause the entire drop to break?
maxbond 3 days ago [-]
In this video someone does it and it seems to work.
But it's a very small drop and they don't melt it all the way to the bulb. I imagine that it could shatter in some circumstances.
(Incidentally glass isn't a crystal, but that's just a nitpick.),
prox 3 days ago [-]
Is glass still considered a form of liquid? Think I remember reading something about that years ago.
sparky_z 3 days ago [-]
No, that's a classic misconception. People claimed that windows "flowed" because really old ones were thicker at the bottom, but that was just how some old window glass was made.
gweinberg 2 days ago [-]
I think the basis of the claim is that glass doesn't have the same kind of phase transition that a crystalline solid would. It just sort of gradually becomes more liquid-like as you heat it.
dasil003 3 days ago [-]
Yeah if you’re installing an uneven pane where would you orient the thick side?
Hikikomori 2 days ago [-]
The bottom.
s0rce 3 days ago [-]
No, its disordered (ie. not a crystal) but not a liquid, it won't flow like a viscous liquid.
s0rce 2 days ago [-]
My comment was a bit over simplified, they do flow, but the time scale exceeds the entirety of human history [1].
Similar to the misconception that Earth's mantle is liquid. It isn't, but time is deep enough for solid rock to flow.
qwerty456127 3 days ago [-]
What it takes to actually destroy it (by applying pressure at a wrong point)?
ninkendo 3 days ago [-]
A tiny amount of pressure applied to the “tail” of it shatters the whole thing instantly, that’s one of the coolest things about it.
qwerty456127 1 days ago [-]
Sure, but I am asking about applying pressure to the head.
undebuggable 3 days ago [-]
My first thought was to see it under hydraulic press and the internet delivered.
dghughes 3 days ago [-]
Someone needs to invent a way to make tank armor out of Prince Rupert's Drop glass.
undebuggable 3 days ago [-]
Once I was stuck down a youtube rabbit hole of someone testing anti-tank portable launcher against increasingly thick ballistic glass. The conclusion was that no glass can resist anti-tank projectile. Maybe large enough Rupert's drop glass could?
ChrisMarshallNY 2 days ago [-]
They must have gotten the librarian in the video from Central Casting.
3 days ago [-]
Rendered at 07:22:58 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
There's also footage from another channel [2] showing a Prince Rupert's Drop bursting at 20 tons with significant damage to both the steel plate and the press.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SuPFbeqqKU
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6NUNroyUys
Sent from a Gorilla glass smartphone with a corner almost broken ^^;
These 'hardness' stats are just marketing bullshit dressed up in barebones material science. They know most people haven't studied material science or understand what 'hardness' means.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorilla_Glass
Bullet vs Prince Rupert's Drop at 150,000 fps - Smarter Every Day 165: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24q80ReMyq0
It's funny to see how topics on reddit (https://l.opnxng.com/r/Unexpected/comments/1jvhcme posted 2 days ago), 9gag (https://9gag.com/gag/aW4vpKd posted 1 day ago) and HN (posted today) are always connected.
HN isn't immune either, given that karma provides 'rights to punish views and accounts' (downvoting). And it makes a great strategy to make a whole lot of socks with 520 karma, and selectively kill comments and stories you don't want.
https://youtube.com/shorts/ERDmKW65t38
But it's a very small drop and they don't melt it all the way to the bulb. I imagine that it could shatter in some circumstances.
(Incidentally glass isn't a crystal, but that's just a nitpick.),
[1] https://doi.org/10.1119/1.19026