As a kid, I was surprised to find that glass marbles would bounce very high when thrown onto a tiled floor. I would guess the reason they don’t shatter is something to do with the structural integrity of a sphere. But if I were to throw a much larger sphere, a fortune-teller’s crystal ball perhaps, onto a suitably hard floor, would it bounce like a basketball? Or shatter into fragments?
You must learn something about the square-cube law. Mass and weight go up as the cube of the linear dimension, but strengtgh only goes up as the square of that dimension. That’s why massive structures and animals are the way they are, while small things can be light and airy and delicate.
You can make glass microspheres that are damned near impossible to break, and very fine glass fibers that will bend easily (as long as the radius isn’t too small). Fiber optics wouldn’t be possible otherwise.
But as you scale up the items, they become much more likely to break. Glass marbles are still pretty tough, but you can break them if you throw them hard enough on a hard surface (as I learned pretty early), but Crystal Balls a few inches in diameter won’t take more than the shortest of drops (and preferably not on a hard surface, since they scratch easily) before cracking.
Damnation! I always forget that damned rule. First I can’t have a giant spider because its legs would snap, now I can’t even make my fortune selling Waterford Crystal Space Hoppers… Thank you, CalMeacham.