Everything Wrong with Minecraft Lava! | The Science of... Minecraft

[Music] the nether the final frontier you already did this intro you lazy hack cheer mojing hi it's me austin since i've been locked in my apartment for two months now and run out of wall space to scribble my inane ramblings and i can't go outside for any extended period of time i am here trapped so i've decided in order to slow the onset of the inevitably encroaching insanity i'd simulate what it feels like to have the wind in my hair and the sun on my face by playing minecraft and hey you know did you know there's a big new update to the game that overhauls another it's kinda kinda great the pigmen have little pig faces and there's a whole new material nephrite that get this does not burn up in lava in fact it floats in lava and i bet i bet you're waiting i bet you're waiting for me to say that it makes no sense right that netherright is stupid and you've all strapped yourselves in for crazy austin well you're wrong you're a fool harry potter and you will lose everything [Music] no nephrite makes perfect sense it's got a high melting point and a high flash point checkmate but you know what it made me realize it's the lava the lava the lava in minecraft makes no freaking sense okay i'm gonna calm down and remind myself that none of this actually matters probably doesn't matter listen if i stop disproportionately caring about things that didn't matter would i even be me no no i would not anyway today we're talking about one of minecraft's og villains right up there with creepers and fire and unlike fire which was nerfed severely in 2011 and creepers which have never been nerfed but have the benefit of being stopped by simple doors lava remains one of the most terrifying foes you can face in the entirety of the game capable of spawning anywhere replacing air blocks once you reach the lowest points of the regular overworld and able to burn almost any item in the game to ashes this makes accidentally stumbling into lava one of the most rage quit inducing things that can happen to you as a player and the lava does not give a crap about you or your feelings fall into a puddle of lava with fully enchanted diamond armor that you spent hours creating tough nuggets they're gone now son lava is such a defining force in minecraft that it influences at least three of the core minecraft and rules for play rule one don't dig straight down rule two don't dig straight up rule three always carry a bucket of water don't dig straight down because you can drop into lava don't dig straight up because lava and sand and gravel and creepers might drop onto you carry a bucket of water because it can help you deal with guess what lava it's also implicitly why you're only supposed to dig down to layer 12 or so when you're doing strip mining lava is a cornerstone of minecraft and defines at least like a quarter of what you're gonna do in the game one way or another it can be used for infinite stone generators it's needed to make obsidian in order to travel to the nether it's the key ingredient in garbage disposal and of course it is a major component in lava moats so what's wrong with the stuff everything absolutely everything let's start with the basics because honestly lava does seem at a glance to be the type of thing that is an unstoppable force of destruction but it really is not lava is a magma that has been expelled from beneath the surface of the planet magma is molten rock how did it get molten that's a good question actually i have no idea i think a long time ago someone started a fire and accidentally dropped it into the grand canyon and that's um what's that oh oh that that's not we're not we're not allowed to i'm not allowed to lie in the show okay fine there's actually a lot of things that cause rock beneath the surface of the earth to melt it can be melted by the incredible pressures and friction that happen where two tectonic plates run into each other tectonic plates are basically these large slabs of earth that make up the crust that we live on and they're constantly moving albeit very slowly given the extreme pressures and forces involved they can easily create enough heat energy where they collide or split to melt rock in any case this stuff is hot super hot anywhere from 700 to 1200 degrees celsius depending upon how long it's been above the surface and it's composite materials it's hot enough in fact believe it or not to actually four realsies set diamonds on fire the flashpoint of diamonds in an oxygen-rich atmosphere like ours on earth is about 900 degrees celsius which is well within the range of your average flow of lava diamond is after all not that different from charcoal you might use in your grill it's made out of the same stuff carbon it's just arranged in a different structure and like charcoal when you set it on fire even with a much cooler heat source it releases the energy stored in its carbon bonds as the carbon from the diamond bonds with oxygen to release co2 a burning diamond that originally was just 900 degrees can shoot up to over 1900 degrees celsius doggy so surprisingly this incredibly resilient real-life material would realistically burn into nothingness if you dropped it into lava and what's even cooler is that we can judge based on the color of the light the lava gives off what temperature it is using thermodynamic spectrometry a fancy way of saying looking at the color of something we can measure with a fair degree of accuracy how hot it is this is because objects all objects in fact give off light if they have any heat at all in the form of thermal radiation even you give off light it's just a very low wavelength because you're like 36 degrees celsius and not 900 degrees celsius the light humans and other animals give off is very low energy and in the form of infrared radiation therefore we can't really see it with our naked eye really hot stuff however gives off radiation within a spectrum that we can see think of glowing hot swords in movies the sun or you know lava based on the color average of lava blocks in minecraft it's blazing at the high end for lava at about 100 to 1200 degrees nice so it's definitely hot enough to burn diamonds amazing and what's even cooler or the hotter is that the lava in minecraft flows quite a bit more slowly than water does just like real lava the flow rate of lava in real life can vary quite a bit but if on the surface of the planet it can flow as slow as less than a single kilometer per hour to up to 10 kilometers per hour depending upon what rock it's made out of how hot it is the slope it's on etcetera etcetera etcetera minecraft lava in the overworld flows at a rate of 2.4 kilometers per hour given that each block it travels is exactly one meter and it takes exactly three seconds to the frame to travel two meters it flows even faster in the nether which is actually pretty awesome since it's supposed to be hotter there reaching a top speed of 7.2 kilometers per hour near the upper end of ordinary no frills lava that's neat so what's my problem with all the lava and minecraft if it's supposedly so realistic i don't know how about literally everything else everything [Music] like how you can carry lava around in a bucket which is fine because the melting point of iron is well over 1500 degrees celsius way above what is typical for lava you'd probably burn the crap out of your hand but sure who gives a crap but then if you throw that same that very same bucket into the lava poof it's gone like the joker making a pencil disappear except like how how how is this bucket that can hold lava somehow burning up two seconds later when i drop it in lava i mean sure we have nether right now a material the only material in fact that not only doesn't burn up in lava but floats that is nonsense here is a list of all things in minecraft that should be able to survive lava in the game granite melting temp of 1215 to 1260 degrees celsius glass melting temp of 1400 degrees iron 1500 degrees sand 1700 degrees more probably than that but i realized just how many materials and minerals are in minecraft and i got bored point is a lot of the materials you use in minecraft every day wouldn't even deform under the heat of lava let alone melt let alone be completely and utterly destroyed and there's no way lava is any hotter than 1200 degrees period so far from being special huge chunks of the game should be totally immune to lava alongside netherrite hilariously enough i looked up the flashpoint of dirt and it's well below the heat generated by lava so all those dirt blocks that are able to hold the lava at bay should be toast but i'm not done yet not by a long shot you ever find yourself trying to play through a hardcore challenge of minecraft the one with permadeath and you're creeping through the nether doing your best not to do anything too dangerous and then bam one of those stupid um what do they call gas shows up and it's just like fireballs you into a lava pit and you just go full gollum like bam your last vision as you sink to your doom is just orange a sea of orange this is completely unrealistic lava isn't made out of water it's not like oil alcohol or all the other ordinary terrestrial liquids this stuff is dense how dense 3 100 kilograms per cubic meter so even though it's super hot which would make all of its component materials less dense than they would be a fully cooled and crystallized because all the particles in it are having a wild party due to being filled with a ton of heat energy and can't stick as close together this is still super super dense this is dense enough for granite which is about two thousand 750 kilograms per cubic meter to float in steel would sink but you a fleshy pile that is basically just water not a chance the average human meat sack of water and some other bits holding them together is only on average 985 kilograms per cubic meter meaning that your fiery death by lava would look a lot less like the terminator and a lot more like just like just burning to death horribly painfully in theory this means you should technically be able to construct a freaking boat out of granite that lets you sail across the lava in the game i mean you'd probably still burn to death because all of the severe radiant heat but you'd look amazing doing it nestle right is not special stuff that should be floating and doesn't burn or melt in lava is all over the freaking place why does it get a pass and that's it that's my whole beef lava makes no freaking sense it's just some like hot dangerous water that flows slowly and destroys your stuff for no reason i hate it i know i didn't make this video because i lost a hardcore playthrough because i got cocky and started digging straight down only to find myself in a pit of lava and have a grudge against the game for killing me even though what i did was entirely my fault and want to be able to float on lava so i can more easily get away and i want my stuff to survive if i accidentally drop it and it's just that's just ridiculous although come to think of it minecraft is generally all over the map when it comes to heat you're able to make glass out of sand that you just like put in your oven for a little bit it could be that i'm entirely overthinking this oh well too late made the episode already bye sincerely austin [Music]

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 3,426,572

Rating: 4.8444328 out of 5

Keywords: minecraft, minecraft theory, minecraft lava, netherite, minecraft netherite, lava, netherite armour, minecraft netherite update, netherite update, minecraft shutting down, minecraft update, creepy, scary, creepypasta, herobrine, minecraft scary, minecraft lore, creeper, enderman, endermen, piglins, minecraft zombie, minecraft science, science of minecraft, the science, the science of, mincraft theory, game theorists, game theory, matpat, game theory minecraft

Id: WcElsPZeFAY

Length: 12min 25sec (745 seconds)

Published: Thu May 07 2020

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