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Mythbusters vs. Gorilla Glass: Adam and Jamie have a smashing time

Gorilla Glass keeps your phone safe, but will it crack under the pressure when the Mythbusters bring out their hammers and air cannons?

Richard Trenholm Former Movie and TV Senior Editor
Richard Trenholm was CNET's film and TV editor, covering the big screen, small screen and streaming. A member of the Film Critic's Circle, he's covered technology and culture from London's tech scene to Europe's refugee camps to the Sundance film festival.
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Richard Trenholm

The latest generation of phone-protecting Gorilla Glass is here, and who better to test it out than the Mythbusters. Here comes the pane!

In new videos made by US glassmaker Corning to promote Gorilla Glass 4, the ever-enthusiastic Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman from Discovery Channel's "Mythbusters" TV show claim we live in the "glass age". The video adverts talk us through a brief history of glass -- including advances in the last 150 year that would "seem like magic" to people in the past -- and show off the properties of different types of glass. The different types of glass are subjected to all kinds of abuse from hammers, drop tests and air cannons, with lots of 10,000fps slow-motion footage of glass smashing, shattering and exploding.

From its origins making train lanterns and Pyrex, New York-based company Corning has moved into high-tech glass creations such as optical fibre and Willow Glass, which is as flexible as a piece of paper. Corning's Gorilla Glass is the toughened glass used to cover the screens of smartphones, laptops and other gadgets: the Samsung Galaxy S5 and Galaxy Note and Google Nexus tablets among them.

The fourth generation of Gorilla Glass is being shipped to manufacturers now, and is expected to appear on new devices in the next couple of months.

Watch this: Meet the people who torture Gorilla Glass for a living

Other Mythbusters shilling their fact-finding reputation include Grant Imahara, who recently appeared in ads exploring how McDonald's makes a meal of things -- taking on that pink slime myth in the process.