question: Why are Rupert's Drops so strong?
comment: Due to the way they're made, the heads of the drops have a surface compressive stress thats equal to nearly 7000 times atmospheric pressure. This gives the head of the drop an extremely high fracture point, making it difficult to break, even by a bullet. & #x200B; Source if you want to read more: [ URL_0 ]( URL_0 )
passages: Prince Rupert's drops (also known as Dutch or Batavian tears) are toughened glass beads created by dripping molten glass into cold water, which causes it to solidify into a tadpole-shaped droplet with a long, thin tail. These droplets are characterized internally by very high residual stresses, which give rise to counter-intuitive properties, such as the ability to withstand a blow from a hammer or a bullet on the bulbous end without breaking, while exhibiting explosive disintegration if the tail end is even slightly damaged. In nature, similar structures are produced under certain conditions in volcanic lava and are known as Pele's tears.
   Section::::Scientific uses.
  
  The process for the production of toughened glass by quenching was probably inspired by the study of the drops, as it was patented in England by Parisian Francois Barthelemy Alfred Royer de la Bastie, in 1874, just one year after V. De Luynes had published accounts of his experiments with them.
   A scholarly account of the early history of Prince Rupert's drops is given in the "Notes and Records" of the Royal Society of London. Most of the early scientific study of the drops was performed at the Royal Society.
   Because of their use as a party piece, Prince Rupert's drops became widely known in the late 17th century—far more than today. It can be seen that educated people (or those in "society") were expected to be familiar with them, from their use in the literature of the day. Samuel Butler used them as a metaphor in his poem "Hudibras" in 1663, and Pepys refers to them in his diary.
  
  The drops were immortalized in a verse of the anonymous "" (1663):
   The Dutch scientist Constantijn Huygens asked Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle to investigate the properties of the drops; her opinion after carrying out experiments was that a small amount of volatile liquid was trapped inside.
   The second unusual property of the drops, namely the strength of the heads, is a direct consequence of large compressive residual stresses—up to —that exist in the vicinity of the head's outer surface. This stress distribution is measured by using glass's natural property of stress-induced birefringence and by employing techniques of 3D photoelasticity. The high fracture toughness due to residual compressive stresses makes Prince Rupert's drops one of the earliest examples of toughened glass.
  
  Section::::History.
   Originally the drops were sold from glass jars on countertops. To prevent drug stores from selling generic versions the company began packaging drops in branded boxes in 1872. To distinguish their drops from imitators, the bearded brothers created a logo featuring their portraits and stamped it on their boxes. When trademarked in 1877 the word "Trade" appeared under the picture of William and the word "Mark" under Andrew's. It followed the brothers became known as Trade and Mark, nicknames that stick to this day.
   The drops are named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who brought them to England in 1660, although they were reportedly being produced in the Netherlands earlier in the 17th century and had probably been known to glassmakers for much longer. They were studied as scientific curiosities by the Royal Society and the unravelling of the principles of their unusual properties probably led to the development of the process for the production of toughened glass, patented in 1874. Research carried out in the 20th and 21st centuries shed further light on the reasons for the drops' contradictory properties.
  
  Section::::Description.
   In the 1940 detective novel "There Came Both Mist and Snow" by Michael Innes (J.I.M. Stewart), a character incorrectly refers to them as "Verona drops"; the error is corrected towards the end of the novel by the detective Sir John Appleby.
  
  In his 1943 novella "Conjure Wife", Fritz Leiber uses Prince Rupert drops as a metaphor for the volatility of several characters' personalities. These small-town college faculty people seem to be placid and impervious, but "explode" at a mere "flick of the filament".
  
  Peter Carey devotes a chapter to the drops in his 1988 novel "Oscar and Lucinda".
   BULLET::::- Orris root
  
  BULLET::::- Rose oil
  
  BULLET::::- Rosemary
  
  BULLET::::- Scented water
  
  BULLET::::- Spikenard
  
  BULLET::::- Styrax
  
  BULLET::::- Tragacanth
  
  BULLET::::- Vietnamese Balm
  
  Section::::Culture.
  
  A pomander is worn by Rosemary Woodhouse, in Roman Polanski's 1968 film, "Rosemary's Baby". It figures as a central part of the plot development.
  
  The pouncet box is mentioned in Shakespeare's "Henry IV Part I" when Hotspur is accused of withholding Scottish nobles captured in a skirmish and in self-defence pleads, in describing the King's messenger:
  
  poem
  
  He was perfumèd like a milliner,
  
  And ’twixt his finger and his thumb he held
  
  A pouncet box, which ever and anon
   Although Prince Rupert did not discover the drops, he played a role in their history by bringing them to Britain in 1660. He gave them to King Charles II, who in turn delivered them in 1661 to the Royal Society (which had been created the previous year) for scientific study. Several early publications from the Royal Society give accounts of the drops and describe experiments performed. Among these publications was "Micrographia" of 1665 by Robert Hooke, who later would discover Hooke's Law. His publication laid out correctly most of what can be said about Prince Rupert's drops without a fuller understanding than existed at the time, of elasticity (to which Hooke himself later contributed) and of the failure of brittle materials from the propagation of cracks. A fuller understanding of crack propagation had to wait until the work of A. A. Griffith in 1920.
   BULLET::::- Lamina VII or SAP, the "stratum album profundum" ("deep white layer"), lying directly above the periaqueductal gray, consists entirely of fibers.
   In 1759 Cluer Dicey & Co. described as the ‘original proprietors’ of the medicine won a case brought against Thomas Jackson for counterfeiting the medicine.
   Pages 103–112 describe the use of "decoction of foxglove" (digitalis) to treat "dropsy" (heart failure), under the heading "A note belonging to "page" 65, "and" 68", and the words "The fox-glove has been given to dropsical patients in this country with considerable success: the following cases are related with design to ascertain the particular kinds of dropsy, in which this drug is preferable to squill, or other evacuants." The case notes given on these pages are the first published account of the treatment, predating the description published in 1785 by its discoverer William Withering in "An account of the foxglove and some of its medical uses".
   Diarist George Templeton Strong wrote (volume 4, p. 122) of a hazardous sudden breaking up of pedestrian-bearing ice in New York City's East River during the winter of 1867 that "The ice flashed into fragments all at once like a Prince Rupert's drop."
  
  Sigmund Freud, discussing the dissolution of military groups in "Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego" (1921), notes the panic that results from the loss of the leader: "The group vanishes in dust, like a Prince Rupert's drop when its tail is broken off."
   Alfred Jarry's novel "Supermale" makes reference to the drops in an analogy for the molten glass drops falling from a failed device meant to pass eleven thousand volts of electricity through the supermale's body.
  
  E. R. Eddison's novel Mistress of Mistresses 1935 references Rupert's drops in the last chapter as Fiorinda sets off a whole set of them.
  
  Section::::See also.
  
  BULLET::::- Thermal stress
  
  Section::::Further reading.
  
  BULLET::::- Sir Robert Moray (1661). "An Account of the Glass Drops", "Royal Society" (transcribed, archive reference).
  
  Section::::External links.
  
  BULLET::::- PrinceRupertsDrop.com High-speed slow motion video demonstrations.
   Mad Jim Jaspers
  
  Sir James Jaspers (aka Mad Jim Jaspers) is a fictional supervillain appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by Dave Thorpe and Alan Davis for the Captain Britain stories in Marvel UK comics and later developed by Alan Moore.
   Much interest has been generated by the chemical cocktail that is secreted by bleeding toads when stressed. The secretions have been shown to exhibit both antifungal and antibacterial properties. This skin secretion may be the reason that chytridiomycosis has not had a major effect on the toads; the antifungal properties may give the toads a resistance to the fungus. Researchers have shown interest in finding ways of isolating the antibacterial/antifungal components of the secretion and mass-producing them as novel medicines.
   BULLET::::- Prince Rupert makes an appearance in the historic time-slip novel, 'The Wishing House', written by Emma-Nicole Lewis. The novel links him romantically to the fictitious character, Constance Yorke.
  
  Section::::In fiction.:Film and television.
  
  BULLET::::- Rupert was portrayed by Timothy Dalton in the 1970 film "Cromwell".
  
  BULLET::::- Harry Lloyd played Rupert in the 2008 TV drama "The Devil's Whore".
  
  BULLET::::- Rupert was portrayed by Will Bowden in the 2015 Dutch film "Michiel de Ruyter".
  
  Section::::See also.
  
  BULLET::::- Canadian locations named after Rupert
  
  Section::::Bibliography.
   He did not publish his discovery, but claimed it only through oral communication. Nevertheless, he received full credit for it, and Carl von Schreibers, director of the Vienna Mineral and Zoology Cabinet, named the structure after Widmanstätten.
   By the mid-nineteenth century there were a variety of different manufacturers and formulae on the market, Thus an advertisement in "The Derby Mercury", for 5 January 1842, is for ‘Barclays’ Bateman's Drops’.
  
  Section::::Marketing.:USA.
  
  In 1731 the medicine was advertised in the ‘’New-York Weekly Journal’’ advertised “An Abstract of the Patent,” printed by John Peter Zenger with the name of James Wallace as local agent authorized to sell it.
   In December 2016, it was reported that Rupert had dropped Bell Pottinger as the PR agency of Richemont, accusing Bell Pottinger of running a social media campaign against him, to divert attention away from persistent 'state capture' allegations levelled at the Gupta family.
   King Standish
  
  King Standish is a fictional character in the DC Comics Universe. King Standish first appeared in "Flash Comics" (vol. 1) #3 (March 1940). He was created by Gardner Fox and William Smith.
  
  Section::::Fictional character biography.
   The drops are reliably reported to have been made in Mecklenburg in North Germany, as early as 1625. However, it has been claimed that they were invented in the Netherlands (although it has been suggested that they had been known about by glassmakers since the time of the Roman Empire), hence common names for them in the 17th century were "lacrymae Borussicae" (Prussian tears) or "lacrymae Batavicae" (Dutch tears). The secret of how to make them remained in the Mecklenburg area for some time, although the drops were disseminated across Europe from there, for sale as toys or curiosities.
   BULLET::::- Willem Bentinck, 1st Count Bentinck (1704–1774), son of the 1st Earl of Portland and his second wife Jane Martha Temple
  
  BULLET::::- William Gustavus Frederick Bentinck, 2nd Count Bentinck (1762–1835), grandson of the 1st Count
  
  BULLET::::- John Charles Bentinck, 3rd Count Bentinck (1763–1833), brother of the 2nd Count, Royal Navy captain, inventor and member of Parliament
  
  BULLET::::- Charles Anthony Ferdinand Bentinck, 4th Count Bentinck (1792–1864), son of the 3rd Count
  
  BULLET::::- Henry Charles Adolphus Frederick William Bentinck, 5th Count Bentinck (1846–1903), son of the 4th Count
  