Scenario 1: You can put pressure on a certain part of a glass frame and you will see white cracks appear. They seem to go all the way through, and yet it remains intact.
Scenario 2: Someone hits a reinforced window with a baseball bat. The cracks appear to go all the way through, and it doesn't break. Why is that?
I suspect it's to do with the molecular structure of glass.
While I'm at it, I'll just illegally bombard you with questions.
1. Exactly what is glass?
2. What makes some glass bulletproof?
3. What is it with high-pitched noises being able to shatter glass?
4. Is it possible to make a noise of such frequency that glass won't just break into smaller fragments, but actually disintegrate? The smaller the fragments, the harder they are to break, right? But could a noise be of such a pitch or force that they break into molecules so small they can't be seen?
5. And of course, my original question. How does glass crack without breaking?
2006-10-19
00:47:15
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3 answers
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Chemistry