It just exploded out of nowhere

A few nights ago my friend and I decided to go for a late night swim. We were there for a bit then decided it was late so we decided to go home. We stopped by his house for a second before I went home. It was about midnight and I was sitting on his couch in his living room. He was standing by a shelf of movies trying to find one to watch. There was a glass ashtray that was sitting on the coffee table before me. It was a standard ashtray you may find in the bar. Neither one of us were smoking and the ashtray itself was empty. I was sitting right in front of it and we both saw with our own eyes, all of a sudden the glass ashtray just exploded out of nowhere. It was like someone smashed it and there were pieces of glass all over the coffee table. It didn't just break in half but it really shattered all over the place. I was looking right at it when it happened. To my friend it reminded him of one of those horror movies where the girl has telekinetic powers like Carrie or something. But to me it was just a really weird experience. I don't know what made the ashtray explode like that. Any ideas?

 

Since we can eliminate the ghost of ella fitzgerald…ha…ha.. or can we

Somehow you must have reproduced the resonant frequency of the glass at just the right decibel level
to cause it to shatter.


Hotwater

 

i had the same thing happen with a glass paper weight.
more then likely, both of them were due to a fault of some kind in the glass.

 

holyshit, i had a glass baking tray do that one night. I hadnt used it in a few days and it was just sitting on the counter and bam-it shattered into peices

 

glass has some peculiar properties, including delayed reaction to thermal stress, and to a combination of thermal and mechanical stress, so delayed as to appear totally unconnected.

while not "everyday" this is no so uncommon an occurance as all that. yes. i've seen it happen too. two of the four green glass dishes i once had did that. each at different times. seemingly totally out of the blue. for no obvious appearant reason.

but glass WILL do that. because its a poor conductor of thermal loads it doesn't readily disspate them, nor do so evenly. chemophysically its more of a liquid then a solid, even though it sure looks solid enough.

glass is just wierd stuff. wierder then we usually realize or think about.