Watch the video of the glass shot blasted off with a 150,000 FPS camera

This material is called Prince Rupert's Drop by scientists.

Materials scientists have studied Prince Rupert's Drop since at least the 17th century, because the Royal Society of London has documented its properties from that point on. A PRD is a small piece of glass that looks like a curved water particle or a barrel with a very long tail.

How to create them? You have to melt the glass, and then let it drip into an extremely cold basin. In fact, when the molten glass is released into a bucket of cold water, the temperature of the water will cool the outer layer very quickly. So fast that even if the outer layer has turned into a solid, the inside is still a liquid glass. If you smash the head of this compound with a hammer, it won't break, however, the tail is the weakest point that when broken, the pressure difference will cause the entire glass ball to explode. not merely crumbling.

So what if you use a gun to fire at it?

Shot of glass ball PRD

Destin Sandlin in Smarter Every Day program did that with a 0.22mm bullet rifle in the video, and because it happened so fast that we could see clearly with the naked eye. so he returned to this phenomenon with a camera that could achieve speeds of 150,000 frames per second. And the result of the movie is a very interesting thing.

The bullet hit the head of the PRD, like reacting to a hammer, it didn't break. However, a wave of waves is brought down along the structure of PRD, causing its tail to break and dragging the PRD "drops" also exploded. However, when Destin retested the test with a larger size PRD, it was unharmed. The bullet once again hit its head, breaking into small pieces of lead, but the glass droplet remained completely intact.

If you want to know more about PRD, you can see how Smarter Every Day processes it. And if you intend to try this experiment at home, remember to wear goggles!