How strong are Prince Ruperts drops.?

k0ua · Nov 7, 2019

How strong are Prince Ruperts drops? Well pretty strong. I think the huge one was not properly crushed, as I think they touched the tail with part of the press.
Prince Rupert's drops don't have much strength if the tail in touched. See what you think. I put this in the safety forum as I don't think this is real safe, but hey it wasn't me doing it

k0ua · Nov 7, 2019

If you would like to learn a bit more about Prince Rupert's drops, this video from the smarter every day channel may help:

k0ua · Nov 7, 2019

Yes, I realize this has very little to do with a tractor forum, but being a science geek I like things like this, and besides "friendly politics" has very little to do with tractors either.

k0ua · Nov 7, 2019

You may or may not like laminar flow.

mapper · Nov 7, 2019

A number of years ago I made some small prince rupert's drops. They are incredibly strong, you can hit one placed on an anvil with a hammer and they won't break. I also made the mistake of picking one up without protection on my hands (gloves) and snapped the tail off accidentally, it literally exploded and I ended up picking microscopic bits of glass out of my finger tips.
It's also interesting to look at one through a polarized filter, very cool pattern caused by the stress in the glass.

Diggin It · Nov 7, 2019

Since the OP didn't bother:

"Prince Rupert's drops (also known as Dutch or Batavian tears) are toughened glass beads created by dripping molten glass into cold water, which causes it to solidify into a tadpole-shaped droplet with a long, thin tail. These droplets are characterized internally by very high residual stresses, which give rise to counter-intuitive properties, such as the ability to withstand a blow from a hammer or a bullet on the bulbous end without breaking, while exhibiting explosive disintegration if the tail end is even slightly damaged. In nature, similar structures are produced under certain conditions in volcanic lava and are known as Pele's tears.

The drops are named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who brought them to England in 1660, although they were reportedly being produced in the Netherlands earlier in the 17th century and had probably been known to glassmakers for much longer. They were studied as scientific curiosities by the Royal Society and the unravelling of the principles of their unusual properties probably led to the development of the process for the production of toughened glass, patented in 1874. Research carried out in the 20th and 21st centuries shed further light on the reasons for the drops' contradictory properties. "

Prince Rupert's drop - Wikipedia

oosik · Nov 7, 2019

Thanks - Diggin it. I've never heard of this...........

deezler · Nov 7, 2019

Awesome, never heard of these. Thanks for sharing. 67k kg.... dayumn.

k0ua · Nov 7, 2019

deezler said:
Awesome, never heard of these. Thanks for sharing. 67k kg.... dayumn.

Yeah, it is a little hard to imagine that something as simple as a lump of glass tempered in cold water putting a dent like that into the hardened steel anvil. I have known about these for several years but still fun to watch them being tortured in a huge press.