Basically I have a shower with a big glass pane and I was in bed and heard a massive crash and went to look thinking someone might be breaking in but no the shower glass pane shattered itself and nothing can fall on it or anything. So I’m so confused. Any ideas?
And before anyone jumps to anything paranormal I’m sceptical of that type of stuff.
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Other people have good answers already, but could also be nickel sulphide inclusion in poorly manufactured glass.
Tempered glass, the type which is used for stuff like shower screens or car windows is under constant tension against itself. The inside of the glass wants to be bigger than the outside. Normally this makes it harder to break as the bonds on the outside are so strong and uniform they prevent it from bending or shearing as easily as normal glass.
The problem is that if you manage to break those bonds, the outside can very rapidly tear itself apart as it finds a way to relieve that tension. It basically pops like a balloon. The reason it breaks into small pieces is because anything bigger is still under tension and once the surface is damaged the crack will spread to ease it.
So your glass could have had a defect or damage which broke a few of those bonds, and heat cycles eventually pushed it to break the next bond along and start a chain reaction which destroyed the whole thing.
Edit: it could even be that some grit fell in the housing or something. The reason spark plugs break car windows is because the edges are sharp enough to cut the glass with very little force.
So you don’t have to whack a car window hard with the spark plug? You only need to scratch at it a lil bit? Huh, TIL
Today I learned
Existing stress, changing temperature and shifting building structure. Any and all of those can cause it
There could have been a defect that caused immense stress in the glass. Alternatively, there could have been microscopic cracks caused by mishandling. Or both. Either way, a tiny temperature fluctuation was probably the final straw that broke the camel’s back. The actual root cause probably happened several years ago.
Definitely ghosts. Shower ghosts. Clean shower ghosts. Clumsy clean shower ghosts.
This is ectoplasm!
They rarely shatter on their own. The damage was probably done earlier but you didn’t see it, and it took a while before it finally spread enough it broke.
Maybe, I didn’t notice any cracks or chips in the glass and that was about 2 hours earlier. But maybe It was a hairline crack or something
Glass can and will break for no apparent reason, even tempered glass.
During manufacturing the glass can take on stress that is not visible but is a ticking time bomb. Temperature differential alone can push that stress past its breaking point.
While this isn’t about shower panes and the specific details probably don’t apply to your shower (well, hopefully), NileRed has a video demonstrating how glass that looks undamaged can have small stresses or flaws that cause it to spontaneously shatter.
This is kinda exactly related lol
Excellent!
Yeah thank you, gives me an idea of how glass can react to things.
If it genuinely helped, I’m genuinely happy to have done so.
My shower door hasn’t shattered, but it has its own problems - I’m pretty sure the previous owner of the house tried to make it luxurious but had no idea what he was doing (as is tradition). Hoping I can learn some things about glass shower panes myself!
Yes it helped, the more I know about things like this the better it’ll help me in the future
I’m guessing there were stresses already there from how it was being held in place. Expansion and contraction (from warming and cooling) exacerbated the stress until failure.
The builders could have improperly built the shower, and after time with the imbalanced weight it shattered. Happened to me about a year ago
Interesting, I’ll take a closer look when I get a chance
