Would/does that actually work? Its been a while since I watched SED Destins video about it, so I dont remember if they experiment with that. But intuitively, heating the glass so non-uniformly that the tail would melt and the bulb remained solid enough to keep the internal stresses intact, wouldnt that steep temperature gradient within the crystaline structure cause the entire drop to break?
No, that's a classic misconception. People claimed that windows "flowed" because really old ones were thicker at the bottom, but that was just how some old window glass was made.
I think the basis of the claim is that glass doesn't have the same kind of phase transition that a crystalline solid would. It just sort of gradually becomes more liquid-like as you heat it.
