Topic: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

I'm working on developing an army based on mongols crossed with winged hussars, and had this idea for them to attach (carefully) Prince Rupert's Drops to shafts for use as arrowheads.

Does anybody here have enough familiarity with glass works to know if this would work?

Obviously they'd be incredibly fragile and useless as piercing arrows, but thousands of arrows exploding into glass dust against enemy armor sounds like a badass weapon. It would SUCK to be on the receiving end: glass in your eyes, lungs...

My main concern is whether the drops would be fragile enough to blow up as soon as they were launched by a bow.

Honestly I may not even end up using the idea. I'd hate to have to write from the perspective of the good guys with their eyes being shredded by glass.

Last edited by Writhyn (2015-03-05 15:00:10)

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Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

From what I understand of Rupert's Drops, it would probably depend on how they were attached to the shaft whether the exploded on firing. The weakest part of the drop is the long filament, as soon as that gets broken the entire thing goes. I think the bulb would be a little more sturdy.

That said, I'm sure there's actually as much of a shrapnel effect as you think there it. Unless they're specifically firing them directly into the enemies eyes or thereabouts, it wouldn't do that much damage. I mean considering these guys are holding them with thier bare hands and breaking them:

Which btw, awesome video /\ highly recommend watching it all the way through. Destin does a great job breaking it down.

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2015-03-05 15:12:47)

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

Yeah they'd be attached via the bulb.

But I wasn't thinking the shrapnel would be deadly. The guy in the video had glasses and probably was holding his breath.

What if you had no idea what they were, did not have glasses, and had no presence of mind to hold your breath as thousands of these are exploding in the air around you?

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Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

That's fair enough, if you're just thinking pure bulk "just fill the air with glass powder" that could be pretty intense.

Although if that's all you're going for, I think arrow delivery might not be the most efficient method. Just in terms of man power and supplies to attach each one individually or in small groups to an arrow shaft. I'm almost wondering if something more along the lines of a catapult or trebuchet delivery of a small bundle might be better. Just bind 50-100 drops together and launch that into the mix.

All of this is of course with the caveat that I do think the image of thousands of arrows exploding into glass fragments is ENTIRELY badass, though not entirely practical.

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

1. This is an awesome idea. Props for having it.

2. I'm almost certain the sudden increase in G's at the shooting of the arrow would break the Drop before the arrow left the shooter's facial region.

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

...then again, I'm not a physicist.

(I, also, never actually made it into algebra class, so I'm way out of my depth here.)

But, upon some cursory research (and not really knowing how to falsify the apparent answer, so, huge grain of salt) it looks like a totally standard arrow being shot be an untrained dork is traveling at 30m/s upon launch. If that's the case, and I'm using this g-force calculator correctly, this would indicate that — here on Earth, anyway — the arrow experiences a sudden shift to 3 g's before coming back down to normal. According to all the same assumptions, a bad-ass archer shooting at 50m/s would deliver a sudden blast of roughly 5 g's to his arrow.

This is all subject to the following questions:

1. Can you reliably make a Prince Rupert's Drop that's not-spindly-and-curvy-and-delicate enough that it's unlikely to catastrophically fail under a sudden punch of 5 g's?

1A. ...but is delicate enough to explode upon impact?

2. For that matter, is 5 g's enough to actually break a Prince Rupert's Drop in the fucking first place, or is this all predicated on a wrongheaded assumption?

I DON'T KNOW PHYSICS

Teague Chrystie

I have a tendency to fix your typos.

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Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

BigDamnArtist wrote:

if you're just thinking pure bulk "just fill the air with glass powder" that could be pretty intense.

This is horrifying. Gah. *shudders*

Also the catapult idea seems like a disaster waiting to happen. I'd HATE to be the guy binding those little bastards together, even if some kind of eye screen was possible. Hours of careful work could be undone in one moment.

Teague wrote:

1. This is an awesome idea. Props for having it.
2. I'm almost certain the sudden increase in G's at the shooting of the arrow would break the Drop before the arrow left the shooter's facial region.

Thanks, man! That "sudden G increase" was my main concern, but I didn't know how to say that.

If that is the only issue I may just let the science slide a bit to make an awesome story. Just wondered if it was remotely plausible.

A shimmering cloud of glass. Beautiful, horrible, demoralizing. Followed up by a cavalry charge by dudes with big wings bolted to their armor, against the good guys who've never seen horses before....

This is gonna be awesome.

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Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

I suspect there are far more effective and practical weapons of a similar explodey-chemically sort. A tiny vial of acid attached to an arrow, phosphorus, sodium in a moist environment, stuff like that.

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

Wouldn't phosphorus explode on impact and keep burning?

I'm with Teague in my limited ability to understand physics, which has certainly limited my own writing some times.

It sounds cool, but I think Zarban might have a point is all I'm saying.

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Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

Prince Rupert's drops are really cool tho. They might be more suited to traps than weaponry. The drop is robust, so it could hold off a spring mechanism, but touch the trip wire attached to the tail, and the drop vaporizes, allowing the spring to trigger the trap.

Warning: I'm probably rewriting this post as you read it.

Zarban's House of Commentaries

Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

In an Iron age society, even if the enemy with the glass is more advanced, I don't know if mass produced chemical weapons is more practical than glass.

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Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

I like the trap idea, maybe.

Also in response to your manufacturing questions, Teague, I don't know if they could be made with more consistent, less spindly tails. Maybe if they were dropped into a narrow tube of water instead of a bucket.
If this did result in stronger Drops, I'm guessing even ones strong enough to survive the 5 g's would shatter on impact with hard surfaces like shields. If they hit flesh, they might pierce without blowing up....

...only to shatter into a gazillion pieces inside the wound when it hits bone or a surgeon tries to remove it.

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Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

Writhyn wrote:

...only to shatter into a gazillion pieces inside the wound when it hits bone or a surgeon tries to remove it.

Yep...yep that was my blood running cold and a shiver piercing my soul.


Thank you for that.

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2015-03-05 17:27:09)

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

Well, thank you. I was short of things that might cause me to wake up screaming in the middle of the night. This will do nicely* tongue

*Thanks to SFDebris for the joke

Last edited by fireproof78 (2015-03-05 18:56:01)

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Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

Zarban wrote:

Prince Rupert's drops are really cool tho. They might be more suited to traps than weaponry.

To me, it sounds like a "we have nothing else" weapon.

"OK, we have bows, but thanks to Frank over there we have no arrows and the orcs are fast approaching. What do we do?"
"Well, we have a bunch of sticks and some glass."
"Perfect. We'll die having annoyed them!"

I write stories! With words!
http://www.asstr.org/~Invid_Fan/

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Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

Trap idea is definitely a more robust and reliable idea. I wouldn't want to be the guy creating the arrows, nor the one firing them; same goes for packing and firing the trebuchet packs. But the trap idea? I now have something for my next Dungeons and Dragons game I run, thanks.

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

We have reviewed your proposal for a new weapons system - thank you for your submission.
After careful consideration, we feel that the complexities of manufacture and delivery make your proposal unfeasible for us at this time.  Instead, we have opted to continue with our current system of setting the arrows on fire, which has proven highly successful.

Yours,
Genghis Khan

Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

The shrapnel will be made of tempered glass, which is the stuff they put in shower doors and such.

When it shatters there are (many more, I'll grant you) much smaller pieces, with edges less sharp. It is therefore way less dangerous than regular glass.

[I was an engineer in a window glass plant with a tempering line for two years.]

(UTC-06:00) Central Time (US & Canada)

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Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

Does tempered glass make Prince Rupert's drops of the same style? For some reason I'd think the differing properties would keep it from forming the same but I'm actually curious now.

Boter, formerly of TF.N as Boter and DarthArjuna. I like making movies and playing games, in one order or another.

Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

I don't see this being any more effective than regular arrows. If they're armored such that regular arrows are ineffective, I can't see you getting anything into their eyes. If you shoot enough, maybe you can irritate their lungs some, but I can't see it doing anything meaningful. While it's a cool idea, it doesn't pass the bullshit test for me.

Last edited by ShadowDuelist (2015-03-06 09:03:59)

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Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

Hm. Maybe it would be better as a "Holy CRAP! What the HELL??" sort of thing, like the horses and the fake wings.

Trey wrote:


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But I DON'T have to be happy about it.
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Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

Boter wrote:

Does tempered glass make Prince Rupert's drops of the same style? For some reason I'd think the differing properties would keep it from forming the same but I'm actually curious now.

As I understand, rupert's drops are, by definition, tempered glass.
Tempering glass (or metal) is accomplished by taking hot or molten material and cooling it more rapidly than usual via water or oil, which is basically how drops are made.

I didn't know that tempered glass broke into less dangerous pieces, though. Cool stuff we learn here on this forum.

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Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

Oh gods. Forgive me for even coming up with this.

But...

Small drop, inch wide or so mounted inside an arrow head. Basic principle being: arrow head pierces, driving drop either into flesh or near skin. Causing the drop to burst in close proximity or inside an open wound.

Last edited by BigDamnArtist (2015-03-06 16:59:28)

ZangrethorDigital.ca

Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

Interesting! But am I the only one who didn't know what Prince Rupert's Drops were before this thread?

Anyway, in answer to the original question: it would work, because it is badass.

Disclaimer: if you dislike the tone of a post I make, re-read it in a North/East London accent until it sounds sufficiently playful smile

Re: Prince Rupert's Drops as Arrowheads

BigDamnArtist wrote:

Oh gods. Forgive me for even coming up with this.
Small drop, inch wide or so mounted inside an arrow head....

No. No. No! No. N-NO!. NNO! No. no!

Well....

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