Bullet vs Prince Rupert's Drop at 150,000 fps - Smarter Every Day 165

All right, Keith. Prince Rupert's drop. Prince Rupert's drop, right? Paper submitted from 1660 to the Royal Society. So this is a very early stuff. Hey, it's me, D. Welcome back to Smarter Every Day. I am in the basement of the Royal Society in London, England. And this is Keith, the head librarian, and he has a special paper written by who? Sir Robert Mor. Okay, and it's about the Prince Rert drop.

Right, that's right. Can you show it to me? Yep, so here we have an account of the mass drops by S. Mor. Will you show me the drawing? The famous drawing? So if we just turn over the pages, "Solus a Kingdom one and strong, but when the top is broken, shivers into men."

So the strength of the Prince Rert strap was recognized way back in the day, even at the beginning of the Royal Society. This is in the early years, right? It is. So in the 17th century, they were playing with Prince Rupert's drops. The early fellows were fascinated by them. They were fascinated back then; I'm still fascinated now.

But today, we're going to use some of the best technology that we have available. We're going to use a high-speed camera and record a bullet striking the bulb of a Prince Rer drop at several hundred thousand frames per second. Let's go get smarter every day.

All right, goggle up! Science is about to happen. The first video I made about the Prince Rer drop here at Lookout Mountain, Orix Hot Glass, was about why the Prince Rer drop was so strong. Today, we're going to test the limits. If you haven't seen that video, you really need to watch it because you have to understand what we're dealing with before this video will make any sense.

This is the setup. I've got a .22 rifle aimed at a Prince Rert drop. I've got a high-speed camera right here; this is a V2511. We're going to run over 100,000 frames per second. So I've got the rifle aligned so that we should hit the Prince Rer drop. The resolution is going to be a little bit lower because that's what you have to do in order to get so much speed, but it should be awesome. Here we go, get your goggles on; let's do it!

My Prince surface drop is wobbling, so I have to time the bullet. [Music] All right, hopefully I got [Music] [Music] that [Music] [Laughter]. The bullet did not break the Prince Rert drop. It looks like it creates a shock wave that runs down the tail, and then the tail shakes, breaks, and then breaks it back the other way. I'm going to do this several more times because that is beautiful.

That gun is pointed in the general direction of the high-speed camera, so I'm a little nervous about that. [Music] Right, just make sure everything looks good. Look at the high speed now; God, it's [Music] awesome. Dang, that is beautiful! It's beautiful, and it's Material Science. If those jokers back in the 1600s had this kind of technology, they would have written way more interesting letters to each other. Not that they didn't do a good job, 'cause they're awesome.

All [Music] right. [Music] Man, this is just beautiful [Music] stuff. [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] Where did that one go? So there's a Prince Rer STP in the yard, and we don't know where that was. A big one too! Oh, I see it! I see it right there. There it is! No way! I'm keeping this; literally bulletproof glass. But when the top is broken, shivers into men.

I think it's really cool that we have been fascinated by this little piece of glass for hundreds of years, and it's still fascinating. Like, this video is amazing because we shot a bullet at a piece of glass, and it didn't shatter! That's amazing! And it's, yeah, they were equally as fascinated.

Hello, Kitty Cat! Hey, before I show you the bullet mark on that Prince Rert stop, can we do something kind of strange? Can I convince you to unsubscribe from Smarter Every Day by clicking that button below to unsubscribe? And then, if I've earned it, please consider resubscribing and clicking the bell beside it to turn on notifications.

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Okay, let's look at this Prince Rer drop. There is actually a bullet imprint on this thing, which I find fascinating. A lot of people ask me if it's actually chips of glass they saw in the video. It wasn't; that's actually lead. The bullet is shattering; that's not glass fragmenting off. You can still see the impact of the bullet on this Prince Rert drop; it's really, really cool!

On the second channel, I shot some of the drop like this and got a little bit different result. If you want to check out the other Prince Rer drop footage that I didn't put in this video, that'll be on the second channel. I want to say thank you to the sponsor of this video, which is Audible.

If you want to listen to a free audiobook, go to audible.com/smarter. A lot of people want to know what I listen to. I've compiled all the things I've ever listened to at smartereveryday.com/audible. You can go check out the books I've listened to, the ones I've recommended, the ones I haven't recommended, but listened to as well. It's all there.

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If you would like to consider unsubscribing and resubscribing to Smarter Every Day and clicking the bell or becoming a patron, I would really appreciate it. Gordon from Michelle in the pit made the audio and the music. Um, Brady got me access to the Royal Society to hang out with Keith. His channel is called Objectivity.

I'm Destin, you're getting smarter every day. Have a good [Music] one!