"Fiery glass-cutter" experiment

We all know that it’s easy to cut a plas­tic bot­tle. But what if you have to cut a glass bot­tle in­stead, will you be able to do that? If you watch our video you will!

Reagents and equip­ment:

• glass bot­tle;
• woolen thread;
• ace­tone;
• wa­ter;
• large beaker.

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Take a glass bot­tle and tie the woolen thread around the mid­dle. Soak it in ace­tone, light the ace­tone and grad­u­al­ly turn the bot­tle to make it heat even­ly. Af­ter a few min­utes, im­merse the bot­tle in the beaker of wa­ter. The bot­tle will crack along the line of the woolen thread and break into three pieces, Care­ful­ly take the low­er part of the bot­tle out of the wa­ter and file the edge. The DIY vin­tage glass is ready!

Pro­cess­es de­scrip­tion

The ace­tone in the woolen thread burns with the re­lease of a great amount of heat. The bot­tle needs to be con­stant­ly turned so that the bot­tle is heat­ed even­ly, and does not crack in a ran­dom place. When it is heat­ed even­ly, the glass heats up and ex­pands. When it is sud­den­ly cooled, un­even com­pres­sion takes place: on cool­ing down, the out­er lay­er con­tracts and dras­ti­cal­ly com­press­es the in­ner lay­er, which has not yet cooled and con­tract­ed. As a re­sult, the bot­tle cracks along the line of heat­ing.

Safe­ty pre­cau­tions

Ob­serve safe­ty rules when work­ing with fire.