Prince Rupert's Drop ~ Glass Blower's Magic Trick Captured in Slow Motion Video

This glass blobby-string thing will blow your mind when you see it explode in slow motion.

Todd Knisely shared this awesome video about a glass blowing phenomena called a Prince Rupert's Drop.

Here's the video (newsletter readers will have to click here to watch it on youtube).

There's another video on the Corning Museum of Glass website, too. -- http://www.cmog.org/video/prince-ruperts-drop

Here's the description, but please - watch the videos. It is so cool. The words below can't even come close!

Smarter Every Day heads to a glassblowing workshop in Alabama to reveal the unique mechanical properties of the Prince Rupert's drop – a tadpole-shaped glass structure created by dropping molten glass in cold water.

As Destin demonstrates, the very high residual stress  within the bulbous end of the drop allows it to withstand a blow from a hammer. However, a slight touch on the drop’s tail will cause the whole structure to explode.

Filming in high-speed with a Phantom v1610  the team capture the explosion at100,000 frames per second to reveal, for the first time, exactly how the Prince Rupert drop explodes.

But why does this happen? With thermal imaging (and some mini-Destins!) we are shown how the cooling process sets up extremely high levels of compressive stress in the outside layers of the drop and extremely high levels of tensile stress on the inside..

As Destin explains:

"If one link in this tension chain is ever cut, it breaks on down the line feeding off of its own stored up energy just like a chemical explosion."

Mechanical strain energy is released in a phenomenon known as a "mechanical failure front". Shooting at 130,000 fps allows the team to measure the velocity of drop’s failure front at over a mile per second! 

Watch the video -- it'll explain it better, and be visually awesome.
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