Glass Table With Steamboat on Top ‘Exploded’; Owner & Guests Sent to Ng Teng Fong Hospital

Imagine this: you’ve just moved into a new home, and you decided to invite your friends over for a meal. And because steamboat is bae, you decided to set your steamboat atop a new fancy glass table you’ve bought. It’s not from Taobao, so you’re pretty sure nothing would happen.

And then you have your meal happily, everyone goes home safely and the Internet is filled with images of your gathering.

That should’ve been what happened, but unfortunately, that didn’t happen for Stephanie Chu yesterday (19 January 2020).

Instead of her sharing wefies with her guests, she shared these images:

What happened?

Glass Table With Steamboat on Top ‘Exploded’

According to a Facebook post by Stephanie Chu (thank you for tagging us, Ms Chu!), she was having dinner with her guests yesterday night when the dining table, which has a tempered glass top and wooden legs, suddenly gave way.

The glass shattered and scattered glass were flying around, cutting both her guests and her. She herself has cuts that are bigger than “an eye”, and I took the liberty to check out Ms Chu’s eyes: they’re really bigly.

The tempered glass is supposedly 15mm, and Ms Chu did admit “there is a potential possibility of thermal stress that may occur on a tempered glass.”

Is it really thermal stress? Read on and you’d understand more.

They were all sent to the hospital, and both shattered glasses and blood were scattered in the area.

And in a Goody Feed style, she did mention that she’s sad that food were wasted as well, because food’s always the number-one priority for a young lady like her.

She hoped that her experience would be “a warning towards all tempered glass top table owners.”

So, what did the furniture company say?

Furniture Company Only Offered to Replace Table Top

Read the sub header? Well, let’s cue the WTF cat.

Here are the exact words from Ms Chu: “..the director of the company said that the best that he can do for us is to replace a brand new laminated table top for us as the base of our table is still intact.”

Simi sai—

Cue the WTF cat again, please.

The company did not even offer a new table or cover the medical bills.

Well, to be honest, even if the company does provide a new table, I’m certain Ms Chu won’t take it, too. I for sure would just give it to my boss so that he can suffer.

Now, to the next point…is it common for tempered glass table to “explode”?

Dangers of Glass Table Top: Common

It turns out that glass table top shattering isn’t uncommon.

You can even find videos on this topic in YouTube:

Simply do a Google search online and you’ll also see countless accounts of glass table top shattering. However, most of them were due to stress and knocks.

As for heat, it does happen but only on poorly made glass tables…i.e. those that you buy cheap cheap from Taobao.

If it’s tempered glass, it’s usually safe as they’re the types used on motor vehicle windows: you don’t see your car windows cracking when it’s hot, don’t you?

And as mentioned, even when faced with stress or extreme heat, it’ll crack instead of “explode”.

So what could have happened?

Was one of Ms Chu’s guests Superman and he accidentally stared too hard at the table top?

Or it could be…

Spontaneous Glass Breakage

To quote direct from Mr Wiki, “spontaneous glass breakage is a phenomenon by which toughened glass (or tempered) may spontaneously break without any apparent reason.”

A few causes were given, one of which is thermal stresses (heat).

But unless Ms Chu and friends were cooking the table instead of the food, that seems unlikely.

And another cause cited by Mr Wiki?

Defects.

This could be due to installation issue, internal defects in the glass or even an inadequate glass thickness.

Now, there’s no way to know if the glass table top is defective unless someone glues all the pieces back, but here’s a piece of advice: if you spot even a hairline crack in any glass, do look into it.

And if you’re having a glass table top for CNY dinner, do make sure to try putting your steamboat on the table once before. You never know if there are any hidden cracks.