Bullets Hitting 'Unbreakable' Prince Rupert's Drops Will Blow Your Mind

Everyone knows that bullets are harder than glass , shoot a bullet at glass and the glass breaks , but if the glass is a Prince Rupert's Drop then it's the bullet that breaks not the glass which as far as I'm concerned confirms that Prince Rupert's Drops are indeed much harder than Chuck Norris ... Fact.


Prince Rupert's Drops are made by dropping molten glass into very cold water and have been the source of curiosity for Physicists since the enigma was first discovered in the 1600's , The drops are named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine who brought them to England in 1660 for the newly founded Royal Society scientific group to take a look at and ponder over , they have been a source of wonder ever since although we now know how and why the magic happens.

Below are two 6 minute videos , the first explains how the magic happens and the second shows Prince Rupert's Drops being shot at on a 150,000 frames per second slo mo camera.

Spoiler: Prince Rupert's drops are so strong, they actually cause the bullet to shatter.

So, what's going on here? As you can see in the video above, shooting the Prince Rupert's drop will typically make the glass object shatter too, but that's not because of breaking the glass at the thick end.

In glorious slow motion, you can watch as the bullet crumbles against the wide end of the drop, sending out shock waves that then rattle the rest of the structure and cause the thin end to break, resulting in the entire thing exploding.
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Hows that for mind blowing , but Chuck's not worried ... well maybe a little.
They're behind you Chuck !

I love this.
isn't it true that if you break off the thin end they become a lot more fragile?

a reply to: Kurokage

Indeed , the screenshot on the first video shows what happens when you clip the tail of a Prince Rupert's Drop , pretty spectacular.

So strong yet so fragile.

Cool stuff.

I had never heard of that glass.
Thank you for sharing!

a reply to: gortex

Neat post, mate.
Those slow mo's are awesome.

I actually have figured out how this work years ago. It has to do with the high energy surface tension forming on the outside of the glass. When the bullet hits it, the energy is collected on the outside of the surface tension and then imediately is transferred back to the bullet, overloading the bonds holding the bullet together and the bullet fragments. It is the basis of tempered glass and also the surface tension on top of the water. It is the reason high energy forms tidal wave destruction.

It is the reason that lots of things have strength, and this energy can be used to override the force of gravity or break up ice and snow with a snowblower. it is how a knife cuts meat or cuts things. Concentrating this energy at a specific point can break the bond of wood when chopping and break the bonds holding fibers of the wood together.

I have done a lot of thinking about how to transfer this energy and see it being used all over in our technology, but the people making tools to utilize this do not completely understand why it works. I have been trying to test how to utilize this to do multiple things over the years.

I started studying this years ago when I tried to cut some tempered glass and noticed that after it exploded if we walked near it the pieces began to hop again and wanted to know why. I also studied the charge that builds up on the outside of trees, thousands of volts when you get higher, but only milliamps of power. This charge protects the tree, removing it to gain energy can weaken the tree so I gave up on it. I spent over six months researching and testing this around 2008 and 2009. Now it is just a part of my perception and I utilize this principle in most things I know, there are many ways to skin a cat, but if you know more, you realize the cat may not need to be skinned because there are many other ways to do things than bust your nuckles. I never did realize that the surface tension could actually break the bullet apart though.

If you were to use multiple lasars or sound waves interacting you could develop an envelope of energy to make a force field. It would be domed shaped, it could not be square, like the corona of a comet or the ionosphere of the earth.

i have reservations and suspicions about this :

i suspect the projectiles are " tampered " - and possibly the proppelant load too

a ruperts bead is increadibly light - just a few grams

at this range - such a target - just held by a flexible thread - would simply be deflected - asnd the projectile carry on - pretty unscathed

there is almost zero resistance in the target

i know how the beads " work " - and why

but they dont re-write physics and newtonian laws in particular

i could be wrong - many things are counter intuative

but thier reaction to the KE of a projectile travelling at 99%+ muzzle velocity - should be greater

no - the impact wont damage the bead head - but it should move it - and this does not happen

edit - clarity - "charge" - replaced by " propellant "

a reply to: ignorant_ape

I guess the time between the bullet striking and the shock wave shattering the body is very short so the shattering has happened before the kinetic energy can do its thing.

Imma experiment too. I’m going to fire one of the Rupert drops out of a high powered rifle at the Polar Ice cap to test a theory. Everyone put on a life jacket this afternoon just in case my theory holds.

It took them 67 tons under a press to smash it. And it had bubbles. Glass bullets come to mind...

originally posted by: gortex

Everyone knows that bullets are harder than glass

Well, that's not really true. Glass is harder than lead on the Mohs scale of hardness. In fact, lead is very soft. But glass is brittle and bullets are very dense and travel very fast.

Just sayin'

a reply to: ignorant_ape

Is it possible for a person to be too skeptical for their own good.

a reply to: gortex

Everyone knows that bullets are harder than glass

No you are wrong.
Glass is 3 to 4 times harder than lead.
Look it up.

a reply to: samkent

Why is hardened glass not bulletproof? Isnt it the same technology but without the weak spot - the tail?

Goggle up. Science is about to happen.

a reply to: Majic

U mean *duck-up right?

My search is not satisfying. Ballistic glass is not made like this. In this context you would throw a brick of molten glass into quench and it should behave like these drops. Instead they layer vulnerable sheets of tempered glass with elastic polymer which makes no sense when you consider that the elastic movement enables a fracture to start spreading and a chain reaction explode the whole thing. It would make sense to layer large tempered bricks

wow!
why not make a drop with no tail?
some one needs to try this with diamond.
it would be the hardest thing EVER.
well untill they find a new hard thing.

hmmm what if you made a ball of hard glass,
they use it as a bullet !

originally posted by: buddha
wow!
why not make a drop with no tail?
some one needs to try this with diamond.
it would be the hardest thing EVER.
well untill they find a new hard thing.

hmmm what if you made a ball of hard glass,
they use it as a bullet !

and shot it at another piece of hardened glass? Wouldn't that interrupt the space time, continuum?

a reply to: gortex

The bullet should be made of Prince Rupert's drops ?