Spring Joint Science Symposium (Part 2) Justin Hallquist ended
the talks with a literal bang as he talked about his work with
Professor Silverman on “Prince Rupert’s Drop”, a special kind of
glass teardrop that literally exploded if its tail end is broken
off. These “drops” are formed by immersing molten glass in cold
water, in which the outside of the glass instantly hardens and
subjects the bulbous portion of the glass to incredibly high
internal pressures. Snapping the tail off sends shockwaves
through the glass, forming many shards and pieces. In
particular, Justin studied the particle distribution of the
shards; in other words, he counted the size and mass of the
shards in order to determine whether they break just like
objects destroyed through abrasion and impact. Universally, the
statistics of these breakings are linear (a straight line) when
the logarithm are plotted. Literally, though, this involved
counting thousands and thousands of particles, which proved very
difficult to figure out. Thus, Justi