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by skellera 1113 days ago
Shout out to Destin from SmarterEveryDay for his love of PRDs.

Learn about and see how it’s made – https://youtu.be/xe-f4gokRBs

Encasing a shattering drop in glass –https://youtu.be/C1KT8PS6Zs4

The process the team uses in the second video to freeze the break in glass is pretty awesome! (If you’re into that kind of thing)

2 comments

Last time this was discussed on HN, someone raised the artist's approach to failure as a rich space for discovery, which was nicely put by him at this point in the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1KT8PS6Zs4&t=1619s
Yeah, I love it. Learn about the entire process and keep going rather than cutting short after a perceived failure.
I think it is contextual, but it's a useful approach in many cases: it's effectively a sunk cost vs value of information analysis: if you've already sunk most of the cost into something and there's a problem which means it isn't going to work, then the potentially valuable information from learning about the next steps is probably pretty cheap, and reduces the risk that the investment in the next attempt isn't wasted. On the other hand, if you know it's not going to work and the next steps involve a lot of extra time/material investment but aren't going to tell you much, then it's probably a good idea to throw the current attempt away and try again.
There's also this one. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3FkAUbetWU

He shoots the Prince Rupert's drop with a bullet. The bullet wins. In high speed, you can see the bullet splat against the glass and break into shards, long before the glass breaks. Really neat.