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)

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.

...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

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.

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.

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.

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*

*Thanks to SFDebris for the joke

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

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.

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.]

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)

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.

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