Corning, the makers of Gorilla Glass, which probably protects the screen on the smartphone you’re using now, has decided it needs to tell us exactly how cool its product really is. To do so, it has hired the Mythbusters team and come up with the videos you can watch below.
The videos are based on the theory we’re living in “the glass age,” and briefly deal with the history of Corning, its innovations, and glass itself. Part one of the two-part series is primarily about glass fiber, used for data transmission, which busts the myth that glass is only ever a solid and easily breakable product. Stick around though, because there’s a quick demonstration of Corning’s Willow Glass.
Willow Glass is thin, flexible, and astonishingly damage resistant. Corning expects smartphones using it to arrive in 2016, which fits in with plans we’ve been hearing from LG and Samsung concerning flexible mobile devices.
Part two gets into Corning’s smartphone glass innovations straight away. We see the usual scratch and drop tests performed on Gorilla Glass, proving its strength. It’s followed by a demo of compressive strength glass, which is the basis of the tech used to create Gorilla Glass, including a very cool 100,000 frames-per-second video of it shattering. Corning’s working on increasing the strength, safety, and flexibility of Gorilla Glass, and there is a glimpse of how this will improve car windshields.
Corning may feel pressured into producing this kind of promotional material, given the increased attention on sapphire glass, which is considered a stronger alternative. Despite not being introduced on the iPhone 6 as rumored, sapphire is already used on some smartphones, such as those from luxury brand Vertu.
Whatever its motivation, the videos are produced in the usual informative, fun Mythbusters way, and are worth 20 minutes of your time.