A brown glass bowl in a corner of a cupboard exploded in small pieces without apparent reason.Explain why pl?

Question

A brown tranparent glass bowl in an open cupboard in the kitchen suddenly auto-exploded without any apparent reason. Small pieces of the glass were found strewn on the floor and on a table a meter away and into other containers in the same cupboard taller than the bowl, which means that the pieces flew up on explosion.If there were some one in the kitchen at that moment he would have been wounded severly in the face by the glass sharpnels. I have preserved the pieces of glass if some one is interested to study the material of the bowl.Is this a physics phenomena. Is there an explanation why this could have happened. Should people be warned of such possibility when buying some sort of glass objects. Is it a commun occurence. The climate in the kitchen was normal. The bowl is marked VERECO FRANCE

Answer 1

Tempering can cause glass to explode. Tempering means that there are internal stresses within the glass that result from uneven cooling from its molten state during the manufacturing process due to the glass's thermal expansion characteristics. This can occur due to carelessness or intentionally. So called "safety glass", like that used in autos, is intentionally tempered. If the glass is even slightly nicked, the tempering resulting is stress concentration that can cause a chain reaction releasing all the stress in the glass in a great low energy "explosion" of glass pellets. The idea is that no one shard of broken glass is large enough to cause serious injury.

Answer 2

Standing in the sun rays the brown glass can easily be heated. The air (and liquid) inside were heated as well. The internal pressure increased and the glass could not hold it. It has NOTHING to do with the mark or form. So be careful with clothed bottles!

Th

Answer 3

This phenomenon is not as rare as you think. When manufacturing these things it’s very important that (1) melt glass be highly homogeneous, (2) heating and cooling the thing be in proper regime. The normal crystal glass never explodes by itself unless hit with a hammer. Either it was not VERECO FRANCE or they violated technology.