why does glass shatter when its hot and water is put on?

Answer 1

The cold water can cause too extreme of a local contraction.

Glass and ice cubes crack due to three major effects:

1) Hot things generally are larger than cold things.

2) Stresses in solids move only as fast as the speed of sound.

3) Large temperature differences create large stresses (partly because of #1 above).

Now I will discuss these three effects:

Things, including glass and ice, are made up of atoms. Temperature is a measure of how much jostling (vibrating) the atoms are doing. The more vibrating the atoms do the farther apart they tend to be from each other. Think of an example: Put 100 students in a room, having each student connected to the nearest 6 students with a strong rubber band. Have them get as close together as they can. These are "cold" students. Now ask the students to run around as fast as they can. These running students are "hot", and they have more space between them than when they were "cold"! They stay more or less close together because of the rubber bands. It's like this with the atoms in solids. The atoms are constrained to stay near each other (by interatomic forces), but when they are moving with more energy (hotter) they are farther apart on average. So hotter solids are larger than the same solid that is cooler, because there is more distance between the atoms.

The atoms in a solid arrange themselves so that they are as close together as possible at the temperature at which they are. If the temperature changes, the atoms rearrange so that they are a different distance from each other, and if the temperature change is sufficiently slow the atoms can rearrange in an orderly manner. The rearrangement ripples through the solid at the speed of sound for that solid. This is because the speed of sound in a solid depends on the average distance between atoms and the speed at which they can move.

Large and fast temperature changes make the atoms rearrange so fast that the other atoms in the solid can't keep up with the rearrangement, and so a crack occurs. So it takes both a large temperature change and a fast temperature change to make a solid crack.

I hope this helps!

Answer 2

That's not exactly the whole story, my friend. It depends on how hot the water is. If the water is as hot as the glass, it won't shatter (but there is an exception, which I'll get to in a moment).

Basically, if the water (it could be oil, booze, or whatever) is very much colder than the glass, the class cracks or shatters because of the DIFFERENCE in the temperature of the glass and the water. Because glass is an excellent conductor of heat (which is to say it quickly aborbs the surrounding temperature) there is a shock effect when going quickly from hot to cold (or the other way around). Specifically, the glass shrinks so fast that it breaks -the molecules of glass don't stay in the same relationship with one another.

Now, you could, possibly and in just the right conditions, actually shatter hot glass using hot water. This would happen because of the chilling effect of evaporation (same efcet as when you perspire). Hot water evaporates quickly, so if the water sizzles off quickly when applied to the glass -the chilling effect of rapid evaporation might break the glass. Of course, what's really happening is that the air is getting involved.

It also depends on the kind of glass. Pyrex glass is made NOT to break under rapid changes of hot and cold, which is why you can take something in a pyrex bowl and pop it in the microwave. And glass laboratory vessels (test tubes and such) are often made of Pyrex glass so you can heat them with a bunsen burner, etc. Finally, "big" impure glass -like a coke bottle- won't be as likely to break under temperature change as brittle glass such as a window pane or tumbler.

OK?

Answer 3

Glass is a super cooled liquid and due to sudden change of temperature with the hot water the glass shatters and breaks

Answer 4

This is because the glass expand when it's hot, and water is cold. when you put some water onto the hot glass (especially the thick glass), the surface that had contact with water will cooled down instantly which cause the glass to contract. While the other surface that had no contact with water is still hot, and it still continue its expansion. half part expand, half part contract, the tension became too big and the glass shatter.

Answer 5

This is due that hot glass expands, and the water is much cooler than the hot glass. This cools down the glass so rapidly and causes it to contract ( get smaller) , Thus causes the glass to shatter.

Answer 6

Because of the difference in temperature
if the glass is hot and the water is cooler (with some notable difference) the glass contracts rapidly causing it to shatter.
and if the water is hot and the glass is cooler ( with a notable temperature difference) the glass expands rapidly and again shatters

good luck

Answer 7

Basically, if there's a small chip or crack, and the car heats up inside and then you spray it with cold water, the change in temperature can flex the glass and turn a small crack or chip into a big crack. It's known as "thermal stress". This is the same principle that creates potholes in the road. When hot and cold cause cracks or defects on the asphalt to expand or contract the damage becomes stressed and eventually more profound. Because asphalt is a bit more “rubbery” (oil, tar, etc) it can withstand quite a bit more stress that something much more brittle and unforgiving – like glass, which tends to simply crack like an egg shell.

Similarly, if you have frost on your windshield and you dump hot water on it, you could end up with a big crack, too.

Answer 8

The thing that makes the glass shatter is heat travelling through it. Shattering is more common in glasses such a whisky tumblers that have thin sides and thick bases. The temperature differetial causes stress to the material and makes it more fragile. More fragile than evenly - thin glass. Wineglasses with thin cuprs and thick stems are also prone to breaking.

Answer 9

thermal physics

thermal expansion and extraction. the glass shrinks to fast causing it to break.
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When you heat the glass up it expands when you cool it down abruptly the physical properties of the glass cannot keep up with the cooling that it shatters

Answer 10

when glass is heated as its natural property it expands suddenly when cool water is poured the surface contracts suddenly and this cause the breaking of the glass.