I hear a lot about tempering when it comes to metal, glass and cooking (tempering chocolate or tempering custard)
What exactly is tempering? How do you do it? How does it work scientifically?
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Tempering glass is basically heating it up and then cooling it rapidly. The resulting molecular structure makes the glass extremely strong, but it also makes is very brittle, so that when it breaks, the entire piece of glass shatters into tiny fragments. This is very desirable in applications like car windows, not only because the strength of the glass makes it more resistant to breakage, but also when it does break, it doesn’t leave large jagged pieces that could easily cut you.
[This video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xe-f4gokRBs) has a pretty good explanation of a type of tempered glass called a Prince Rupert’s Drop, along with an explanation of the physics behind it.
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