If you own a smartphone you probably live in constant fear of dropping it. Corning Inc. wants to give you peace of mind with the 4^th iteration of its venerable Gorilla Glass and, to top it off, they’ve hired the Mythbusters to show us just how cool it is.

The glassmaker, who supplies glass to both Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, among other manufacturers, says its new Gorilla Glass 4, unveiled yesterday, is up to two times tougher than competitive glasses and survives up to 80 percent of the time in damage events.

How did they arrive at these stats?

After examining hundreds of broken devices, Corning scientists found that 70 percent of “field failures” are caused by a device being dropped onto rough surfaces such as concrete or asphalt. They then set out to recreate this scenario in their lab. They used data gleaned from examining cover glass broken in the real world, as well as in the laboratory, to simulate a real-world drop from a height of one meter.  You can see the test below:

New opportunity for Corning

Corning faces challenges from multiple fronts. The company reported a second quarter drop in sales of Gorilla Glass as a result of lower demand for smartphones and tablets. They also face competition from manufacturers introducing synthetic sapphire as an alternative to glass as a mobile display cover. The material is already used by Apple to protect the iPhone’s camera lens and on the Touch ID surface on the iPhone 6.

One saving grace may be that producing sapphire glass is not without its own challenges, as last month’s bankruptcy of GT Advanced Technologies showed. GT Advanced was of course the company set to supply Apple with sapphire glass for its iPhone 6, 6 Plus and upcoming Apple Watch.

Corning though, is making hay while the sun shines and have enlisted the help of the Mythbusters’ team to explain to us just how awesome their product is.

The promo takes the form of a two-part video series based on the premise that we are living in “the glass age”. The videos are about 10 minutes each, but well worth the watch and bound to satisfy the curious geek in anyone.

In part one, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, of popular Mythbusters fame, give us a brief outline of Corning’s history, its innovations and the history of glass itself. They then move on to demonstrate the use of glass fiber in modern-day data transmission and bust the myth that glass does not bend and breaks easily.  They also demonstrate –and this is the best part of the video—Corning’s Willow Glass, which is thin, flexible and extremely difficult to damage. Corning expects mobile devices to start using Willow Glass as early as 2016. Bendy smartphones may just become a thing after all.

In part two of the series Adam and Jamie puts Corning’s Gorilla Glass through its paces with a series of tests comparing it to traditional glass offerings. They use a very impressive 100,000 frames-per-second video to show how the basic tech behind compressive strength glass works and finish off by giving us a peek into the future as they show us how Gorilla Glass can be used to revolutionize car windshields.

If by now you are wondering if your smartphone or tablet sports Gorilla Glass, you can check on Corning’s list of products with Gorilla.

Image via Corning