At what speed does a crack travel when a drinking glass gets broken?
by 
Owner of the GD Universe
ANSWERS: 3
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I think the whole crack forms at once. So the speed would be infinite!
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http://www.engr.colostate.edu/~dga/high_speed_video/Cans,%20Bottles,%20and%20Glass/glass_break.wmv Exactly as I suspected...
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Actually, physical phenomena like this can only travel at the speed of sound for the medium in which they are traveling. For glass, that's on the order of 5000 meters/second. So, for a 10 cm (4 inch) crack, it would take 0.0005 seconds for the crack to propagate. That's pretty dang fast!
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