Molten Aluminum vs Liquid Nitrogen (& Dry Ice!)

hey guys backyard scientist here today we're doing two of my most requested videos at the same time today it's the ultimate battle of hot versus cold get ready for molten aluminum versus dry ice and liquid nitrogen let's get started so the first thing I needed to do was to buy some dry ice and believe it or not I can actually buy dry ice at my local grocery store it only costs a dollar fifty per pound I put the dry ice behind some cinder blocks to protect myself just in case there's any splatter all right I was just about to start up the forge and when I open this up guess what I found hiding inside a little baby lizard this guy's so lucky he would have been a shish kebob if I fired this up no I gotta get him out of here that's the tricky part I was sent this FLIR one thermal camera a long time ago but my iphone broke so I never got to use it sorry this is a real thermal camera so we'll be able to see anything cool or hot that happens that we can't see with our naked eye really weird this is pretty interesting the aluminum just slid right off of the dry ice it's because a layer of carbon dioxide was produced under the hot aluminum I thought something more would have happened I'm gonna try something else but let's look at the results first in the meantime I look at the finger oh look at that it's like oh yeah I deserve that oh that's funny look at this stuff left behind nice little indent that one's frozen solid like ice cubes is it yeah touch it yep it's ice cold it's so cold it hurts yeah it's like frozen I tried to make an indent into the block of dry ice by heating it with a blowtorch but I guess it didn't make a deep enough indent and the aluminum just slid right out again I'm making a bigger indent using the heavy ingot of tin I used in my steak video when the ingot of tin started to cool down something interesting happened it started making a really cool chiming noise and I think it's caused by the contractions of tins internal crystal structure so that was just an interesting thing to happen maybe somebody else has a better explanation so now that there's a deeper hole I tried to do this again yeah there's definitely a more vigorous reaction the aluminum started bouncing out of there and dancing all around it's pretty cool I like this shot it looks like a lake of molten lava but it's molten metal instead we drop some molten aluminum onto the dry ice and that was pretty cool but what happens if we put dry ice into the molten aluminum so what I'm going to do is fill this cup with chunks of dry ice and then fill that with molten aluminum so when I pour this string the chunks of dry ice will just fall right there into the molten aluminum and then we'll see what happens there that's still good all right almost oh my God look what it's bubbling made like a bunch of bubbles and it's just above these oh it's still molten underneath it is most that's aluminum stew right there well that was a fun experiment now you guys know what happens when you pour molten aluminum onto dry ice now let's find out what happens when you pour molten aluminum into liquid nitrogen molten aluminum has a temperature of about 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit and liquid nitrogen is negative 320 degrees Fahrenheit that is a very big temperature difference the molten aluminum falls through the liquid nitrogen like it's not even there but there is such a big temperature difference that there's a lot of rapid boiling of the liquid nitrogen nothing explosive but it is pretty noticeable the batteries in the FLIR infrared camera ran out so I didn't get to capture that in infrared and my camera only captures two seconds of slow-motion so I didn't get to see the glass breaking either but it did happen really fast this is the end result of pouring liquid nitrogen into those square flowerpots like that now it's time to move on what happens when we pour liquid nitrogen into molten aluminum I use the remote pouring device to stay far away just in case something happened like a molten aluminum explosion but nothing like that happened because I think the liquid nitrogen is just so less dense than the aluminum it didn't even get a chance to go below the surface and never even came into direct contact with the aluminum because of the massive amounts of nitrogen gas produced well guys hope you liked this video see you next time

Channel: TheBackyardScientist

Views: 11,944,662

Rating: 4.7728181 out of 5

Keywords: molten aluminum, aluminum dry ice, aluminum liquid nitrogen, dry ice, liquid nitrogen

Id: bWU2yQunAHU

Length: 5min 54sec (354 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 21 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/stufoor]

Did... Did he start poking it with his finger?!

[u/Creativation]

Let me totally ruin the possibility of clearly hearing this interesting chime sound coming from the cold tin by laying over some obfuscating background music.

[u/Kylearean]

Actual scientist here: This guy is an irresponsible moron. No safety equipment, improper glassware, improper handling of liquid nitrogen ... it's just a matter of tims before serious damage occurs.

I feel sorry for some impressionable idiot or kid who tries to melt stuff like this and gets badly burned.

[u/[deleted]]

:poke poke: "OW! ... I deserved that"

Yes. Yes you did.

[u/sphks]

Let's ruin the lawn of my parents.

[u/Stormdancer]

That hurt to watch.

You know, if your IR camera batteries run out, you could recharge them, and THEN do the experiment. Well, not really experiment, just sort of dicking around. But that's fun too.

[u/nm0s]

"I bet it's backyard scientist"
.... "yup"

[u/fishsticks40]

How is this even science?

I mean, it's not, obviously.

[u/MerlinTheWhite]

Looks dangerous, but I tested this throughly before I recorded it! I have faith in the physics behind the Leidenfrost effect :)