Prince Rupert's drops of metallic glass

One of the perks in my current job was ten hours a month with the companies AI for anything I wanted to talk about. I knew I wasn't the only person talking with him at once but wasn't concerned with trivial things like multiplicity in conversations.

In previous months, we had gone over my favorite authors, scientists, inventions, etc. Towards the end of our last meeting, he had challenged me to come up with one almost impossible item. Something that I would buy if it existed, but couldn't both because of it not existing, and for the fact that I didn't have unlimited funds.

Today I think I had a good answer. I had always been fascinated by the properties of Prince Rupert's dops. The tadpole-shaped drops of glass seemed to be orders of magnitude stronger in most places, yet their tails were as brittle as normal glass. All of the force applied to the heads of the drops was diffused and redirected to prevent damage. I wanted to know if we could take those natural examples and use them as templates for modern materials like metallic glass and metamaterials to create armor of unheard of resistance that was still wearable.

I had counters prepared for pushbacks about materials and processes but none of it was needed. The moment I said "Prince Ruperts drops of metallic glass" he was off and running. I don't think I had even suspected how excited he would be.

"This has been the best morning of this entire year."