calichris

iTrader: (2)

should have called tyrese from 2 fast 2 furious to break it

CK6Speed

iTrader: (1)

Glass definitely has gotten a lot stronger, but I remember when I was in middle school, there was a large empty field with a lot of abandon cars where I live. We used to walk through there and trow rocks (Not large rocks, about the size of a large marble) and break all the glass on those cars. It was actually pretty easy. I once punched a front windshield and it spider webbed cracked. Never tried punching the side glass though. This was sure funny to watch though

CK6Speed

iTrader: (1)

Anyone know which is harder to crack? The windshield or the side glass? I know the Lexus windshield is pretty fragile from what I read around here. I've only replaced the windshield on one of my cars and that was the Lexus.

Och

iTrader: (3)

Well, the side glass in most cars is 3/16" or 1/4" thick, tempered glass. Tempered glass shatters into tiny pieces when broken, and its usually up to four times stronger than regular annealed glass.

The windshield however is not tempered, but laminated annealed glass - consisting of two or more thin layers of glass with pvb interlayer, adding to about 1/4" thickness. So in a windshield its much easier to crack an individual layer of glass, but the glass will still be held together with the interlayer, which is pretty hard to break through.

As far as the strongest piece of glass I've ever had to break - it was the rear window if a Nissan Frontier pick-up that I got locked out of. I had to bang it with a heavy metal object, and when I finally broke it, it shattered into small pieces, just like tempered glass, but on top of that the pieces turned black. Perhaps the glass was tempered and somehow chemically treated to add strenght? It was only 1/8" thick, but it's strengts was comparable to that of 3/8" thick tempered glass.

P.S. The Lexus windshield maybe fragile because it consists of more than two layers of glass, thus making each individual layer thinner, but increasing noise isolation and increasing the overall strenght?

toy4two

it was posted on here, in the RX300 forum. The demonstration was supposed to show how the volvo uses some special glass so when it breaks it doesn't shatter or something, but they couldn't even get the RX300 glass to break with a sledgehammer until like the 10th try.