Tempered glass is used where there is a likelihood of human contact and as such is made to shatter into small pieces when broken.
Breaking a sheet of tempered glass.
Spread a 10 foot length of industrial paper.
Always wear protective clothing when working with glass.
Thick industrial paper is used to catch the broken tempered glass.
Any non tempered glass will normally break as a single crack or multiple cracks which develop or propagate from origin either spontaneously or gently.
Here we break a large sheet of tempered glass to see the amazingly fast crack propagation followed by the crashing down of the shattered glass.
Spontaneous breakage in tempered glass is however much more dramatic as the whole pane of tempered glass breaks with a loud noise and high visibility as it breaks into thousands of small pieces.
The small pieces are not very sharp and safer to deal with than the next type.
Breaking tempered glass at work.
How to safely break a sheet of tempered glass step 1.
Most of the time spontaneous glass breakage is the result of improper annealing of the glass by the manufacturer or thermal shock of the glass during normal usage.
These breaks tend to be linear and not circular.
The glass breakage is shown full speed half speed.