For those of you who aren't conversant in the Prince Rupert's drop, this weird, scientific enigma may be a seemingly simple glass object created by dripping molten glass into very cold water. That process creates all types of crazy physical properties, which we'll move into later, but the tip result's a teardrop-shaped piece of glass that's practically unbreakable at its bulbous 'drop' end but will shatter from the slightest pressure at the elongated tail end.
Physicists are obsessive about these 'unbreakable' glass drops since the 1600s. But what happens if you shoot one with a bullet?
In a 2016 video, Destin from Smarter daily used the most recent technology to seek out out, by documenting the complete thing at an excellent 150,000 frames per second.
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Spoiler: Prince Rupert's drops are so strong, they really cause the bullet to shatter.
So, what is going on here? As you'll be able to see within the video above, shooting the Prince Rupert's drop will typically make the glass object shatter too, but that's not due to breaking the glass at the thick end.
Inglorious flick, you'll be able to watch because the bullet crumbles against the wide end of the drop, sending out shock waves that then rattle the remainder of the structure and cause the skinny end to interrupt, leading to the whole thing exploding.
To understand how this works, you initially have to understand why a Prince Rupert's drop is so weird in the first place.
When the Prince Rupert's drop is formed, molten glass is poured into extremely cold water, causing the skin of the drop to chill and solidify almost instantly, while the within remains molten and cools more slowly.
Because of thermal expansion, glass wants to expand while it's hot, and contract while it's cool.
That means that because the molten inside the glass gradually cools down, it wants to contract and pull the solid outer layer inwards. But because the outer layer is already solidified, this just makes the entire thing tighter, making that bulbous end of the Prince Rupert's drop just about indestructible, and, because it seems, bullet-proof.
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But because the surface of the glass is in extremely high compressive stress, and also the inside is in extremely high tensile stress, if one link is ever broken, the entire thing explodes, feeding off its stored internal energy.
This is what happens when the delicate thin end at the rear of the drop gets broken - it releases all that pent-up energy, and that is why the complete thing shatters.
To understand that properly, take a look at this incredible slow-mo video that Destin originally did on the Prince Rupert's drop some years ago:
Now we all know that these incredible pieces of glass are even more fascinating because they'll also withstand a bullet from a .22 rifle when shot at the proper angle.
In fact, if you watch to the top, you will see the mark left on one in every of the Prince Rupert's drops which was only grazed by the bullet, and didn't even break. So epic.
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