Unintended Security Consequences of the New Pyrex Recipe
This is interesting:
When World Kitchen took over the Pyrex brand, it started making more products out of prestressed soda-lime glass instead of borosilicate. With pre-stressed, or tempered, glass, the surface is under compression from forces inside the glass. It is stronger than borosilicate glass, but when it’s heated, it still expands as much as ordinary glass does. It doesn’t shatter immediately, because the expansion first acts only to release some of the built-in stress. But only up to a point.
One unfortunate use of Pyrex is cooking crack cocaine, which involves a container of water undergoing a rapid temperature change when the drug is converted from powder form. That process creates more stress than soda-lime glass can withstand, so an entire underground industry was forced to switch from measuring cups purchased at Walmart to test tubes and beakers stolen from labs.
Dom De Vitto • May 4, 2011 7:29 AM
Woot!
So the story here is that you need to know your customer base very well before changing your product to be (what you think is) ‘better’.
Would be interesting if they change the receipe back, following a decrease in sales 🙁