A(lexs)Blog: Prince Rupert's Drops

Also know as Rupert's Balls or Dutch Tears.

Prince Rupert's Drops (PRDs) are pieces of molten glass that have been quickly dropped into cold water. The resulting piece of hard glass has many unusual properties. These unusual properties are the result of the PRD cooling so quickly. First a hard outside shell forms (in black). Inside of this shell the glass is still molten. As this molten glass cools down, it contracts, therefore putting more and more strain on the outside shell. As a result, the PRD becomes a giant bomb waiting to shatter. Fortunately, the big glass bulb is almost impossible to break. But wait... There is a catch... Since the entire PRD is linked together AND it is under a ton of stress, if you break off just one piece of it, the entire thing will go booooom. Since the tail is extremely fragile, when you break it, the entire thing fractures into minuscule pieces. Traveling from the break point, the fracture travels at about 3708.84 miles per hour. That means that it would take 1.829143344011 hours for the fracture to travel all the way around the moon, 6.71395908155 hours to travel around the earth, and 30.8822 days to travel around the sun.WOW! That's far! Now I am going to test that PRDs are real by melting sugar into a form of glass. Unfortunately, candy is not glass and it is not hard enough to resist the extreme pressure of itself cooling and did not make proper PRDs.