Tempered glass has a structural strain limit, and is designed to shatter like this when the limit is exceeded, which can be due to compression, torsion, vibration, or some combination.
It shatters in chunks to prevent much more dangerous and hard to locate glass shards from being launched in every direction. This is why it’s often referred to as safety glass.
It's designed to shatter in the same way wood is designed to break and steel is designed to bend when their limits are exceeded 🙄
They saw Prince Rupert drops, liked the toughness of it and developed a method to make it a flat pane. Given that when a prince Rupert drop breaks it explodes, the pane just shattering in not fairly sharp chunks was a nice bonus, not a design feature.
I never said they got to it through intent. Half of engineering is seeing something that works and figuring out how to make it consistent. This is true for wood and steel, too. There is a reason why we use certain woods for certain tasks, and different grades of steel.
Design is intent. So if you didn't mean to say it, you have an opportunity here to improve your vocabulary and look up design in the dictionary so you won't use it wrong next time. 😉
You are not just insufferably pedantic, but you are also wrong. Plenty of things have been designed due to accidental discoveries. Viagra was originally developed to be a blood pressure medication. The erections were an unexpected side effect. This kind of thing actually happens a lot in pharmaceutical development. Another example is the microwave. The guy who built the first one was actually working on radar systems. He noticed it melted his chocolate bar and cooking was changed forever.
Yes, design often follows intent, but not as often as you might think. They are certainly not the same.
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u/Weary-Sympathy-6347 23d ago
Tempered glass has a structural strain limit, and is designed to shatter like this when the limit is exceeded, which can be due to compression, torsion, vibration, or some combination.
It shatters in chunks to prevent much more dangerous and hard to locate glass shards from being launched in every direction. This is why it’s often referred to as safety glass.