Can you really break glass with a sparkplug?

Question

I was just curious, one of my friends told me they could do it

Answer 1

spark plugs are hard little things. throw them on the body of a car and you'll dent it... and it can, of course, break glass.

Answer 2

Well, it looks like everyone answering above me are just guessing...assuming anything hard will break a window.

I'm assuming what you are referring to is breaking a car window or you wouldn't have asked in this section.

Automotive glass is very hard to break as it is actually 2 layers of tempered glass with a film between them. Many vandals and thieves use the porcelain off of spark plugs to shatter car windows. Throwing a rock or even a spark plug won't do this.

Answer 3

Easily is the word! The white insulator material is a hard glass / ceramic.
For the heck of it in our lab. I was able to very accurately saw a spark-plug in half lengthwise using a Pistorius water fed saw and a Norton rubber based silicon carbide impregnated blade. It took about 5 minutes to complete the cut but I can tell you the material was much harder than cutting any glass or ceramic our company ever made. I could have used a diamond cut off wheel but the thickness of the wheel would have removed too much of the stock on the spark-plug. It would have taken less than 30 seconds with one of those wheels.

Answer 4

I had a car broken into once and the officer told me that thieves break up the ceramic insulators on spark plugs and then throw the ceramic pieces at the glass to shatter it. I've never tried it, though.

Answer 5

Plain and simple answer...YES! it is the porcelain NOT the metal or titanium on the plug just the porcelain. If you have the pice of porcelain in your hands and tap the tempered glass it will not break, you must release it from you hands. You dont need much throw, pressure, or speed.

Answer 6

Not by itself - not enough energy by a long shot. However, if the sparkplug is igniting an explosive atmosphere, especially one where the temperature and pressure are high enough to detonate, it can (and does) break metal.

Answer 7

a whloe white paper for you..
A novel and efficient method for forced entry into vehicles using broken spark plug insulators to break the windows was reviewed. Various experiments were performed in which a number of objects, varying in their physical characteristics, were compared to the broken ceramic plus insulators in order to examine the uniqueness of the latter in the breaking of tempered glass. A plausible mechanism was presented attributing the great efficiency of the insulators to their hardness in relation to other materials (MOHS scale), and to their potential for the concentration of force in one point because of the sharp, jagged ends.

Answer 8

Glass will easily break by striking it with any pointed object ,a spark plug will work but not at all angles.

Answer 9

Yeah, because it has a metal end and the other end is porcelain. I can break glass with a rock just as easily

Answer 10

If you throw it, yes. In fact, something as small as a ball-bearing or a pebble, if thrown hard at a side glass window will shatter it.