LIQUID METAL BULLETS in Slow Motion!

hey guys backyard scientist here but we're not gonna be my backyard for long because there's some things that I just shouldn't do in my backyard in fact I want to be so far away from my backyard we're going to a different state so take a trip with me as we make the world's first sodium-potassium liquid-filled bullets let's get started all right so I've got two different bullets here one is just a normal bullet and the other is called a hollow-point when a normal bullet hits something it kind of just gets deformed and smashed up a bit in the front but when a hollow-point bullet hits something it opens up like a flower hollow-point bullets are made out of soft lead so they expand faster and dissipate more of their energy so we're gonna fill the bullets with different softer metals and see if they perform differently let's start with sodium metal sodium metal is soft way softer than lead it's so soft you can easily cut it with a knife the next up is potassium and it's even softer than sodium I can tear it with my hands like it's made of silly putty I can just tear it open like that it's crazy it's also a lot more reactive than sodium as soon as I toss it in it instantly reacts cool now that she got some background information I'll give you a quick rundown how I made these bullets I decided to modify store-bought ammunition so I just removed the bullets saved the powder and then melted the lead from the copper jacketing then I melted down the sodium and later the potassium on an oil bath once the metal was molten I sucked it up with a pipette and I carefully injected it into the empty copper jackets and once I filled all the copper jacketing with the different metals I decided to weigh them out to make sure that they were all consistently filled so I'll get good results all right now it's time to start our experiments and the first bullet we'll be testing is a sodium bullet here's the this is the copper jacketing left over from the bullet oh nice so it definitely it expanded like it should have because it's a hollow-point bullet but did it create a bigger cavity than it normally would have because it was filled with sodium metal let's check the height speed to find out dude I think oh wow yeah that's the bullet it didn't even make it six inches in that soft sodium metal inside the hollow-point opened up as soon as they hit the water it didn't even make it six inches in don't worry we're gonna try a lead bullet too but first let's move on to potassium there's a piece right there stuck to the glass so if I knock it into water time for a bullet number two this is filled with potassium it's a little bit more reactive than sodium so we should see a better reaction with this this was even crazier than the sodium I mean look at that copper jacket it just completely exploded and now we've got a cool jellyfish coming into the fish tank and the whole thing's jumping around there's a tidal wave there it could have surfed on that yeah it's crazy how much it moves each frame though still there's nothing in the barrel it didn't get jammed up there's no bullet fragments in there yes the gun didn't couldn't eject the round because the round was too light this is the sodium I just thought we should have filled this with pH indicator like phenolphthalein so it would turn pink when we shot it well I've got more important things to worry about my fish tank is falling apart but some last-minute repairs may save it for one more shot and then we have this which is liquid metal sodium potassium a light it's probably the closest thing we can do to getting to shooting real mercury out of a gun yep mixing together sodium and potassium makes a liquid metal and room-temperature so all I did was put it in a bullet and cap it off with hot melt glue I'm soaking the fish tank is completely destroyed I don't know what happened I I don't know if I missed there was the pressure from the blast here's there's the bullet you can see it boom you can see the fireball these are just amazing results I mean this is probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen and I'm very happy because I have seven more of these bullets and some other cool tests coming up but now let's try shooting a lead bullet oh yeah I thought I felt something in my face I scared the dog away too I still needed to shoot a lead bullet at this but it was leaking really bad on account of it missing the entire front half well a hundred feet of really expensive tape later and I might have saved the day [Music] this shot was awesome look at how that bullet comes in and still spinning and it just expanded instantly as soon as I hit the water it might not have thrown as much water around or as big as a gas bubble but the way that that gasped cavity collapsed back in on itself that looked pretty devastating alright here's all the clips one more time side by side and I want to hear what you think do you think that these bullets would be more effective than a traditional lead bullet let me know what you think down in the comments and like I said before I have seven more each of these bullets and I've got some crazy stuff planned and you'll just have to wait until next week to see what it is and again thanks to Nathan at aimed research calm for letting me use his high-speed camera without him it just wouldn't be possible to do this video and of course check back next week for the sodium and potassium bullets versus a watermelon and see you guys then bye for 2 days extra content we have an extremely dangerous propane can we must deal with it wow that was bigger than I thought

Channel: TheBackyardScientist

Views: 4,403,626

Rating: 4.8679252 out of 5

Keywords: slow motion, sodium metal explosion, sodium metal, slow mo, Liquid metal bullet, liquid bullet, mercury bullet, potassium metal, potassium bullet, sodium bullet, exploding metal, exploding bullet, hollow point, potassium metal explosion, backyardscientist, backyard scientist, the backyard scientist, high speed camera, slow, slowmo, motion, slomo

Id: dhbWfhBDNzk

Length: 6min 52sec (412 seconds)

Published: Wed May 04 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/bennettbf]

Thanks you, Internet, for answering the questions I never thought to ask.

[u/bjchu92]

This probably falls under r/shittyreloading material.... But I still love it. Takes some balls to be willing to send those loads.

[u/Easy_Kill]

I wonder how well these would store if powdercoated....

TIME FOR SCIENCE!

[u/BigBrassPair]

Very interesting. Not sure if it is better than a lead core hollowpoint, but interesting anyway.

Also, not sure how durable or even safe it would be to carry around moisture reactive substances in a close proximity to your body.

[u/bmwsoldatome]

that was some cool science.

[u/jcdenton10]

Lead poisoning for my enemies. Mercury poisoning for me.

[u/DW-64]

Yo wtf lol

[u/Someone3882]

Cody's Lab shot a mercury bullet before. What he did was cool everything with liquid nitrogen before shooting it so the bullet stayed as a solid while in the barrel.

[u/thepirho]

Not to be a wet blanket but wouldn't these be some kind of war crime, prohibited ammunition? If not, white phosphorus rounds should be next on the list.