The bizarre mechanics of how and why a glass droplet known as a “Prince Rupert Drop” cannot be broken from its bulb and explodes from its tail have evaded full comprehension since this anomaly was discovered in the 17th century.
The dawn of super high speed video cameras, which can record at insane frame rates in the hundreds of thousands per second actually enabled Destin of Smarter Every Day to calculate the failure front velocity of a Prince Rupert’s drop, which had eluded science for centuries.
