Brittle materials like glass break in a completely different way to metals. Whereas metals deform before breaking, glass fractures abruptly. However, physicists from the University of Montpellier and the CEA laboratory in Saclay, near Paris have now shown that glass may behave like a metal when it fractures, but on smaller length scales (F Célarié et al. 2003 Phys. Rev. Lett. 90 075504)
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