14 DAY TRIAL // Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman are famous for going to near extremes in their attempts to debunk or confirm so-called myths about certain events, possible situations, phenomena, and products. Sometimes, however, they go the opposite route, in a sense. Corning's Gorilla Glass appears to have prompted such a response.
A few days ago, Corning released its latest version of Gorilla Glass, which it calls Gorilla Glass 4. It is a type of glass that can withstand a lot more punishment than normal glass.
Compared to soda lime glass, which breaks every time if you drop a commercial device constructed with it, Gorilla Glass 4 only breaks 80% of the time, and that's when the testers took care to drop it flat on its face, to maximize odds of damage.
Official videos and commercials aren't trusted by everyone, however. That's where the well-known mythbusters come in.
The MythBusters ran their own tests
They didn't actually go to the same lengths that they do in some of their TV show episodes, but only because testing a pane of glass is a lot easier than, say, reproducing a battle situation involving ancient ballistae.
They also seem to be a lot less skeptical of Gorilla Glass' toughness from the very start, taking a pretty candid stance in the infomercials below.
Probably because Gorilla Glass is at its fourth generation and they definitely spent a lot of time playing with the previous ones.
The MythBusters have released several videos as part of the multi-part series they call “The Glass Age.” The videos are only available on YouTube at the moment, and besides the strong glass, also look at the flexible Willow glass.
The two not only test the glass but also discuss the use of glass throughout history, and how the material essentially defines the current age, just like the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age defined their respective segments of history.
Among the arguments to support their case they point out the prevalence of glass in everything from windows and lamp shades to fiber glass cables.
The bias
Since these are infomercials and they were published by Corning, you might think the attitude of the MythBusters is a bit more favorable than their characters would warrant. Still, the history lessons are accurate and interesting, and in the end, it's true that Gorilla Glass is a lot harder to scratch or break than normal one, without any drawbacks other than the price.
