SINGAPORE: A customer and her friends were left stunned after a glass holding a hot drink exploded while they were out at a food court.
“This incident happened in the food court at Techpoint in Ang Mo Kio Street 65 recently,” wrote Felicity Lim in a Facebook complaint group on Sunday (Nov 3).
“We were sitting down for no more than five minutes when the glass my lady colleague was holding suddenly exploded and shattered into pieces.
The spoon flew, glass shards and small particles scattered everywhere, landing on our table, drinks, and the surrounding floor.
The hot spilling liquid left my colleague’s top and skirt drenched, and some of the glass particles got trapped in her clothes, too,” she shared the events that transpired.
“The incident left us shell-shocked, and we were not in the right frame of mind to complain to the stall vendor right away,” Ms Lim shared.
“All we wanted to do was to leave the premises fast and send our colleague back home to change and wash up.
This is a serious issue which the drinks stall owner needs to take action on before we see more faulty glasses explode,” she added.
Ms Lim then added that since she and her friends could not find any contact information for the food stall online, the incident was reported to a general email address of the developer of the estate.
Singaporeans respond to the shattered glass incident
In response to the incident, however, a handful of online users labelled the incident a “normal” occurrence and a “freak accident.”
“Looks like a Teh Peng?” wrote one. “Mind you, the way it is prepared is hot tea instantly added with ice cubes. This may happen if the glass does not tolerate a certain range of high and low temperatures.”
“It’s normal…” wrote another. “It’s happened to me twice at coffee shops.”
“This is a freak accident–something out of the stall owner’s control,” wrote a third. “A small hairline crack we can’t see can cause it to break.”
A fourth explained with science, commenting, “Because when they pour in hot water, the internal surface expands much faster than the outer surface, thus causing the glass to shatter— thermal stress.”
A possible scientific explanation for the shattered glass
According to the Corning Museum of Glass, a sudden temperature change can cause the glass to break.
When glass is exposed to a rapid shift between hot and cold, different areas of the material adjust at different rates, creating stress in places that may already have tiny cracks or imperfections.
Glass, like most materials, expands when heated and contracts as it cools.
If one area of the glass heats or cools faster than the surrounding sections, it creates uneven tension—essentially, a tug-of-war between the two areas. This tension, if strong enough, can cause the glass to shatter.