ADVERTISEMENT
“There are two scenarios for why oven glass may break spontaneously,” says Mark Meshulam of Chicago Window Expert. “There is a family of furnace glass that is soda-lime glass, which is window glass, and it is heated and cooled quickly to temper it. That is a type of glass used in oven doors. Another type is borosilicate glass. It is most commonly used in laboratory glassware or old Pyrex glass, and tolerates heat and cold very well. So, the change to soda-lime glass has caused an increase in this type of breakage because it is not as tolerant to the thermal cycles that the glass will go through.”
But it’s also possible that the explosions are caused by a small defect in the glass called nickel sulfide inclusion. “It is only a tenth of a millimeter in diameter. “That little ball has some strange properties.” Meshulam said, adding that “Over time, he struggles to get out. And sometimes a high-temperature event, like cleaning the oven, can finally cause that spontaneous failure that was there.”
continued on the next page
ADVERTISEMENT
