Why glass dishes can explode unexpectedly

Marina Hill says she is lucky she wasn't hurt when a brand-new glass mixing bowl spontaneously shattered in her Victoria home, seemingly for no reason. An expert warns that tiny imperfections, impurities or poor formations of glass can cause failures, as opposed to changes in temperature.

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[kevinmathew]

We're all here because we just experienced this

[JG-lvwq]

This just happened to me half an hour ago. A glass bowl just exploded and kept cracking! It scared the hell out of me! Straight out of some horror movie

[leos]

This just happened to me about a half hour ago. Set of 3 bowls. Two sitting together on a cupboard without doors. Big bowl just explodes out of the blue just where they've been sitting for a couple of weeks. Glass went into two other rooms, that's how hard the explosion was. Inexplicable !! Getting rid of glass bowls.

[waterwine]

I’ve heard of newer Pyrex dishes exploding while in the oven but never glass just sitting on a counter. Weird

[vahidm]

Imagine if that was a child standing over the mixing bowl cracking an egg or something. Oh my goodness!

[mr.anderson]

It's a true occurrence. I looked this up after having an IKEA pint glass explode. It shattered everywhere into a many pieces like this lady's bowl. It's different than when a glass drops and breaks. There were no chunks larger than 1/2" (1 cm). Insane.

[jonfklein]

I looked into this a couple years ago when I was shopping for some glass baking pans.

Basically glass cookware used to be all made of borosilicate glass back when Pyrex was invented 100 years ago up until about the 1980s. Then the glass cookware manufacturers started transitioning to soda-lime glass which is cheaper but less resistant to rapid temperature changes. They temper the glass to give it extra strength, but it is still weaker especially if the tempering isn't done correctly. So now almost all glass cookware in the North American market, including Pyrex and Anchor Hocking, are made of inferior soda-lime glass.

In Europe however borosilicate glass is still common for cookware. For example European Pyrex is borosilicate glass. I don't know why that is, but it could have to do with government mandated standards being more stringent.

There are a few brands that sell borosilicate glass cookware in North America. Oxo makes some borosilicate glass baking pans, but the best source that I've found is Ikea. Apparently all of their cookware is made of borosilicate glass. I believe it is manufactured in Europe and sold around the world in Ikea's stores. So they make all of it to European standards, which means borosilicate glass. It's quite cheap too.

So buy your glass cookware from Ikea and send a message to Pyrex and Anchor Hocking that their product is crap!

[katya]

I just poured myself a glass of orange juice, left it on the counter and the whole thing just cracked in perfect halves. Watching this video makes me feel less crazy.

[Gabriel]

Anyone here because it happened to them? I was just pouring juice on a jar and a tiny piece just ejected itself from the bottom of the jar and now my kitchen is wet with juice on the floor.

[m.s.]

Phones explode
Ecigarettes explode
Glass explode too

I give up...

[kid]

It sounds like their not heat treating the glass properly or happened to make the formula for the glass incorrectly. Part of glass making is making sure there are no internal stresses in the glass, given if any are present it can cause the glass to break explosively if broken by accident or self destruct if the stresses are too great. I hope that they figured out what caused it, as thats a serious issue and liability if their not producing things correctly. Glassware is fine to use FYI, my mother has a nesting bowl glass set that has been with us since I was born and none have ever exploded or broken like that, even when we dropped them at points in time. Its just when bad batches occur and companies don't test and check their glassware is when we see this kind of thing occur.

[NeoRipshaft]

This segment has some absolutely delightful matter-of-fact quotes lol
0:55 "Glass shattering randomly is a clear problem."
1:35 "Well, _clearly_ a bowl should not be _exploding_ ..."

[Nazrininator]

"Glass shattering randomly is a CLEAR problem." 🤣

[chu]

I'm here because I kept recalling 10 years ago a drinking glass suddenly breaks in front of me. my first thought was it's weird and amazing because I witnessed it. and I also thought that it broke on it self because it's cheap and fairly thin but breaking on its own is just mind boggling.

[brianfong]

I use metal bowls cause I don't shoot TV shows that require the upper echelons of heavy glass bowls.

[andyhowlett]

It's caused by poor manufacture of toughened glass. Part of the treatment uses heat, but if the cooling is not handled correctly there is a massive stress built in to the glass. It takes only a small impact to cause the dramatic failure.

[BearAxeBear]

Look like something wrong with thermal tempering process, so the internal stress of the glass did not fully release.

[Sherwoody]

We just had a juice glass explode in our cupboard today. It sounded like someone had thrown a glass across the room, and it literally shattered into hundreds of tiny pieces. We’ve had these glasses for a few years and we’re now debating if we should throw out the rest of them.

[gitmoholliday]

I had a tea cup and it dropped on the floor, picked it up and it seemed okay
but the moment I did use it it shattered in a million pieces,
some of them ended up almost 7 yards away, these cups are great but once you drop them or scratch them don't trust them, these pieces can end up in your food or what ever is around.

[mbkot]

Just tonight a glass cup extremly exploded like a bullet near my mum she is bedridden, just half an hour after nurse finished given mum medication she uses to fill up that exploded glass cup with a water for mixing pills. Really unbelievable !!!