Beth's Yellowstone Bottle Trick Is Far From Reality

According to the Nevada Film Office, "Whenever you see a dramatic scene in a movie where an actor is flying through a glass window or breaking a glass bottle over someone's head, breakaway glass is what you see being shattered, not real glass." This breakaway glass is also known as sugar glass because it is made out of sugar. It's brittle enough to shatter easily without causing serious physical harm to the actors or anyone else on set. And it's so cheap and easy to make that you can find dozens of YouTube tutorials that teach you how to make your own. Then the movie or television studio will add dramatic sound effects and speed up the footage to make things feel way more violent and intense.

The glass bottle that the average person drinks beer out of (or any other beverage of their choosing), according to Interesting Engineering, is "comprised of silica sand, soda ash, and limestone ... [which] helps with durability." Yes, limestone, a rock that is somewhere between a 3 and 4 on the Mohs scale of hardness, making it comparable to marble (per MarvaMarble.com). Glass is made of melted rocks, and they're designed that way to make the bottles stronger and more durable. Think about it: why would Coca-Cola or Budweiser want to sell their product in glass bottles that break easily? They'd probably lose massive amounts of revenue that way. So in order to protect their bottom line, the bottles have to be as hard as they can afford to make them — which is much harder than what you see in the movies and on TV.