Don’t try to punch through the windshield, it is not only tempered but laminated too. Try to bust out a side window.
Tempered glass is about seven times stronger than regular glass of the same thickness. And since car windows are about 5/8 inches thick, it makes them very strong.
The integrity of auto window glass is important in a roll-over accident. This is the reason that you can get a ticket for having a cracked windshield. It is not that the crack might obscure your view, it is because the roll-over strength has been lost, the strength of the glass is integral to the design.
Tempered glass is strong, but if you hit it with something sharp it will breach the tempered skin and shatter. So you can break your hand hitting the window trying to break it, but any sharp rock or knife will make it go ‘sping!’ and kernal up into corn sized pieces.
If you find yourself in a situation where you need to break a car window fast, go for the side window and hit it with something hard and sharp. Stabbing it with a little rock you find on the ground will be a lot more effective than breaking your hand by punching it like they do in the movies.
Personal note: I have punched out the front windshield in an old Ford Falcon, but it involved a lot of tequila and turned out to be a bad idea.
A glass punch causes a weakness in the glass. In turn, the physical force upon that weakness causes the glass to shatter. If you can score the glass and then hit it, the glass should shatter as well.
Many modern cars use a bonding resin that would prevent you from being able to pull windshield off. (In fact there is no frame, just a bead of resin, and the glass sits on top. To remove the glass, a wire is inserted through the resin and sawed back and forth around the perimeter of the window.
Side windows are also safety glass, so the risk of flying glass to anyone inside is small. However many cars now have what is sometimes called anti-smash, anti-theft or quiet glass, which has a plastic sandwich between two layers of glass just like the windshield and rear window.
My understanding on what happened was that Goldberg has a short piece of pipe hidden in his fist and that’s what he was actually using to break the windows.(Which is why he was using a hammer fist each time, the pipe was sticking out the side of his fist.) Unfortunately when he broke the second window he accidently dropped the pipe inside the car and broke the last window with his hand.(Cutting himself pretty seriously in the process.) Anyway here’s a video of it. (He was out quite a while recovering from the injuries he suffered on the last window.)
A big guy I used to be friends with - Darrell - did this once stoned and drunk out of his mind. It took about three punches, he got through, but he definitely broke some knuckles.
sorry i forgot months in the sentence.she punched the key remote to lock the doors, my mother gave her the keys to entertain her for the minute or so she was putting the cart back to those little cart islands in the parking lot.
I like the scene in “Last Action Hero” where Ahnold is out the movie world into the real world; he tries to punch in a car’s side window, only to have his hand bounce off the unharmed window and he yells “That hurt!”.
OTOH, a friend of mine got into trouble at age 16 when he tried to dislodge a thick layer of freezing rain off the windshield. He kept punching the windshield with the side of his fist until he suddenly found he had a giant spiderweb of cracks on the passenger side. Oops. I guess the repeated deforming eventually got the cracks to start.
I have had a giant bird hit my Honda Civic windshield at 75mph many years ago. (It was slow leaving the road kill) I swear the windshield bowed in about 3 inches, but there was no sign of damage and the windshield was fine for many years after that.
He probably needed a few stitches to close the wound, but it was much less serious than presented. The time off is more likely to have been related to other injuries, or a contract dispute. It’s also impossible to get the lowdown on anything that happens in pro wrestling, the whole game is based on twisting reality with fantasy. All in all it shows how stupid it is to punch glass. The scar on my hand is constant reminder of that.
If you have an egg in the refrigerator, give it a try.
You wrap your hand around the egg as if you’re holding a tennis racket. Then try closing your hand is if you’re making a tight fist. The egg will resist the crushing pressure.
Last time I tried it, I couldn’t do it.
If you are able to do it, you’d be surprised at how much strength it actually takes.
I believe that this myth is just a prank to pulled on the unsuspecting. I have done it repeatedly to show that it can be done. But be warned, it does explode and make an enormous mess (launching innards 10+ feet) so only do it outside.
I guess it depends on how one approaches the experiment.
If one is hell bent on crushing the egg, he will find a way to adjust his grip or curl his fingers to eventually break it.
However, if the intent is to test the limits of the egg’s shell, you follow the directions mentioned in the link. You will surprise yourself because intuition says the egg’s shell is fragile under all circumstances.
The point is that the convex shape of the egg, the curvature of an bridge’s arch, and the curvature of door windows (with hammer blows bouncing off of them) show similar principles of geometric integrity.
A friend was trying this once to no avail. While he was squeezing his hardest, I lightly touched the egg with the tip of my finger. Egg went everywhere. It was cool.
