next time dont get that cheap ass non tempered glass...bro.

Most vehicle side windows are made of tempered glass, compared to the laminated glass of the windscreen. The windshield is designed to "hold" its pieces upon severe impact due to the lamination process (a layer of plastic material sandwiched between two layers of glass) whereas the tempered side windows will shatter into small relatively harmless globules. Tempered glass is used due to it being roughly 4x the strength of non tempered glass, and cheaper to produce than laminated.

Most automotive side glass is typically between 3-6mm thick, depending on the region of origin, eg Europe, Japan, USA etc. That said, calculating the compression, tensile and sheer strength a particular window can sustain is not exactly simple. However as a simple baseline, a 2ftx2ftx5mm sheet of tempered glass, with supports 2ft apart can support roughly 160lbs of sustained weight. In the case of automotive design, window frame support, distance of supports, curvature etc will change the properties and strength of the glass.

Long story short, with the vehicles window fully rolled into the frame, that lion would need hundreds of pounds of force directed at a single point to reach the shatter point. Granted, I've never arm wrestled a lion, so maybe those folks were just a can of Vienna Sausage ready to open anyway. Best not to mess with the king.

I'd be more worried about the vehicle flipping, or being picked up and thrown. They weren't wearing seat belts so both scenarios would be pretty serious, if not fatal. Additionally, debris falling on the truck or more aptly, how some debris can be picked up and turned into a projectile that can penetrate the metal and/or windows causing great harm.

I would wager that in most cased to break tempered glass, the outside pressure would already be high enough to roll/flip the car. But to be safe, you're better off cracking the windows anyway.

Your video, Tempered glass yields to a fragment of a spark plug, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

No tempered glass, huh #thirdworldproblems

>> ^RhesusMonk:

You can't seriously have just said that...>> ^mxxcon:
And that's why everybody needs to have a Window Breaker in their car.



mxxcon's statement makes sense to me.
obviously it wouldn't help if the window-breaker was in the locked car with the babies, but if someone in the 2-3 cars nearby had a window-breaker, the job would have been much faster. Not sure where the random dude with the huge pipe came from...

I was surprised at how ineffective the skateboards were. A window-breaker (or even centerpunch tool) breaks tempered glass much faster and safer.

That obviously was not Tempered glass.

Shouldn't that be tempered glass that shatters instead of breaking into big sharp slicy bits?

(if for nothing else than to stop it shattering when a hot cup or plate gets put on it.)

Who needs consumer safety standards any way - There's money to be made!

cool, similar to how tempered glass works in most car windshields, most small cracks will be closed back up by the surface (in compression) but if a large enough crack forms (someone breaks the glass) it shatters into thousands of pieces.

This video shows how so called "Prince Rupert's Drops" are created by dripping a small amount of molten glass into water and then shattering them after they have formed. When a small bit of molten glass is dropped into water it often shatters instantly due to the obvious thermal stress and brittleness of the glass but sometimes the glass cools just evenly enough such that it does not shatter and remains vitreous. In this case the outer layer of the drop cools much more quickly than the inside and this sets up tremendously high tensile and compressive stresses in the drop. This gives the drop of glass very weird properties such as the ability to withstand a blow from a hammer on the bulbed end without so much as a nick. However, if even so much as a scratch is made on the tail end, the internal stress will be released all at once blowing the drop apart, shattering it utterly into a fine glass powder. The effect has been known for about 350 years and is the first ever example of tempered glass, though that certainly wasn't recognized until hundreds of years later and it was only used as a party trick to impress kings and such way back then.