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On the last day of Chinese New Year, one family in Singapore encountered a harrowing incident in their own home.
Their kitchen sliding glass door completely shattered, moments after one of the home occupants walked past it.
Shattered glass door
CCTV footage of the incident was shared by one Eldora Lie showing how the entire door shattered into pieces.
Eldora Lie/FB
Eldora Lie/FB
Eldora Lie/FB
A gif of it:
According to the timestamp on the CCTV footage, the incident happened around 4pm in the afternoon.
In Lie's post, she said that nobody was hurt in that incident, and her husband was the nearest to the door at that time.
Speaking to Mothership, Lie said the noise was very "loud and sudden".
At that time, she was in the living room with their two sons, both in their playpen.
She also expressed her relief that her 15-month-old twin boys were not injured.
Four buckets' worth of glass
Lie told Mothership that her husband, helper and herself all had "minor cuts at the bottom of (their) feet" while trying to clean up the pieces.
Sito Rong Feng, Lie's husband, also said that they had to clear four buckets' worth of glass shards.
Sito Rong Feng/FB
The glass door was installed over two years ago.
When Lie asked their contractor about why this happened, they were allegedly told that tempered glass is not shatter-proof.
The contractor also apparently told them that tempered glass shatters into "cubes" rather than "sharp pointy glass".
Her full post here:
Shattering of tempered glass
The phenomenon of tempered glass shattering is not new.
Tempered glass is a type of glass processed by controlled thermal or chemical treatments to increase its strength compared with normal glass.
Here's a video explaining why tempered glass can randomly shatter:
According to experts, instances of shattering are very rare. However, it can happen due to variations in the manufacturing process.
Tempered glass is also designed to specifically break into small granular chunks, instead of jagged shards that could more easily cause serious injuries.
Top photo via Eldora Lie FB video.