Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Exploding Oven Door

WCityMike — Wed, 21 Dec 2005 08:13:00 -0800

On Thursday night, my stove's glass door exploded for no discernable reason whatsoever. Since MeFi's population encompass many trades, I'm hoping there's someone with a background in physics, engineering, or an appropriate tradesman who either knows or can venture a fairly educated guess as to why it happened. I had just finished cooking two small pizzas for 450 degrees for 14 minutes. I had taken them out of the oven and was cutting the pizza on the tray with a pizza cutter. [The stove is a GE 30" Free-Standing Gas Range (Model No. JGBS07PEHWW). It is not a self-cleaning oven, nor is it a glasstop oven. I believe it was brand-new, as the landlord is in the process of renovating the building and is putting new appliances in each unit as they renovate them.] I heard a large bang/shatter and saw a lot of glass crumbs fall on the kitchen floor. The glass was safety glass, like the kind you see in windshields — in all the cleanup that followed, I never came across a single glass "crumb" from that door that had a sharp edge to it. Indeed, my cat's crystal litter was more uncomfortable to trod upon than the one or two crumbs I missed during clean-up.

I opened the oven door and immediately noted that the inside glass had shattered, and that there was glass inside the stove, inside the door's metal frame, around the edges, etc. Thankfully, it was safety glass, so none of it appeared to have any hard edges.

It bears repeating that I never slammed the oven door (nor could I slam it hard enough to shatter it; I’m simply not that strong). I also do not believe that the glass slid or fell out of its holder, due to the presence of glass around the edges and in the oven (suggesting it burst inwards towards the oven). Some of the glass was warm to the touch, but then again, I had just finished cooking the pizzas.

After I cleaned it up, I of course looked on the Internet, and found others whose G.E. oven ranges' glass doors had exploded — specifically, links here, here, here, here. (I don't know which model the complainants had, except in the latter.)

On the bright side, it doesn't appear as if it's happening on a national basis, if, with such a popular brand as G.E., I can only find a handful of complaints of it happening spanning over six or seven years — plus, were it exploding regularly and nationally, a recall would have undoubtedly followed. So I think that the odds of it happening to me again are low, but not out of the question. Hopefully, it would again result in no injury, since this model's glass door is solely on the inside of the oven, with a sort of heat shield front that is in no danger of breaking similarly.

My landlord replaced the oven with another one of the same model. I know that Ask MeFi encompasses a large crowd of professionals, and I am frankly wondering if anyone (perhaps with a background in physics, or engineering, or the appropriate trade?) has an educated guess, or knows, why the glass broke. I would feel a bit more comfortable having this mystery explained (or at least having a possible few rational explanations under my belt). And, given the less-than-fruitful discussions the above-linked individuals had with G.E., I don’t think I’m going to get much of a straight answer out of them.

Thoughts?

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Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Exploding Oven Door