How does safety glass work?
Why is it that at the scene of a car accident, the broken glass is always in really small pieces, yet when a baseball breaks a house window, there are large jagged pieces? The answer is that safety glass is used in automobiles. Safety glass is something many of us look through every time we ride inside a vehicle or enter a public building. There are two kinds of safety glass: • Laminated • Tempered Automakers began using laminated safety glass, also known as auto glass, for automobile windshields in 1927. To make laminated safety glass, the manufacturer sandwiches a thin layer of flexible clear plastic film called polyvinyl butyral (PVB) between two or more pieces of glass. The plastic film holds the glass in place when the glass breaks, helping to lessen injuries from flying glass. The film also can stretch, yet the glass still