"In the studio, the teacher told us to hold the drops of glass tightly in our hand, then he caused the tempered glass to explode, an ode to how sure he was that it wouldn't hurt us."
Now, this video below isn't actually from our own studio, because I don't happen to have access to a camera that is this amazing - but this is something that we enjoyed doing in school. In fact we enjoyed it way, way too much. In second year we were taught how to create Prince Rupert's Drops as an (insanely) fun way to teach us about tempered glass!
Now, this video below isn't actually from our own studio, because I don't happen to have access to a camera that is this amazing - but this is something that we enjoyed doing in school. In fact we enjoyed it way, way too much. In second year we were taught how to create Prince Rupert's Drops as an (insanely) fun way to teach us about tempered glass!
You all know that tempered glass is extremely strong and resilient, but did you know that it breaks differently than regular glass? Did you know that it's not as dangerous as normal glass? In the studio, the teacher told us to hold the drops of glass tightly in our hand when they were exploded, an ode to how sure he was that the tempered glass was safe.
"I remember when I was young, my gran heated a meal up for me in the microwave, and the glass plate broke!"
The reason glass cracks and breaks is because there is internal 'stress' inside of it. Sometimes glass is stressed because of incompatible material - which could be a metal, or even a different colour of glass. We do our best to make sure there is no stress in the glass by letting it sit in a kiln (oven) at (usually) 515° for anywhere from a couple hours to a couple months (depending on how thick the glass is). This temperature allows the molecules to slowly get to their perceived proper place (not to get off topic, but if you REALLY let all the molecules in glass go where they needed to go, you would no longer have glass, you would have real crystals instead, like quartz!).
I remember when I was young, my gran heated a meal up for me in the microwave, and the glass plate broke! I thought it was rather curious that the break line somewhat followed one of the designs pressed into the glass. Well now days I know that the reason the plate broke was because, likely, the temperature shock was too much for it. What do I mean? Well, each type of glass can only take so much of a temperature shock, because of the little stresses in it. If you took a frozen glass plate and poured boiling hot water over top of it, I wouldn't be surprised if it broke.
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