The Evolution of NileRed + NEW LAB TOUR

in early 2014 I just graduated with a biochem degree and I was working as a lab tech in an organic lab I was given the freedom to work on some small projects and I decided to just document some of the things that I'd done I initially had no intention to share any of it publicly in March of 2014 though I changed my mind for some reason and I decided to post something to YouTube I originally wanted to just post random video clips but at the last minute I chose to narrate it and make it kind of like a video lab report I did like this so that I could repeat the project if I ever wanted to I remember hovering my cursor over the publish button on YouTube feeling really nervous I honestly thought I was going to be torn apart for everything from my voice to my lab skills I went ahead and published it anyway though and I waited for the hate comments to pour in but to my surprise people actually genuinely seemed to like it I mean there were some comments about some poor lab practice and you know the fact that my intro is just a still frame or a still image but besides that people are genuinely very positive and nice about it unfortunately if you want to go and check those videos out now as of a month ago you're not gonna be able to find them because I took them down to kept getting flagged or striked by YouTube and I just kind of got annoyed and took them down so unfortunately I can't see them but I have included some clips in this video so you can kind of see what they were like the first major change in my channel was in early 2015 when I stopped working in the lab and became a chem grad student I wasn't able to film in the research labs so I had to start doing everything from home working with chemicals in my house though was kind of weird at the beginning and I honestly thought that it might have been the end of the channel I figured I'd just try it out and see how it went and I slowly started working on some projects I managed to get a bench to work on in my garage but it really wasn't anything fancy and you could see all the shelving in the background there was a sudden change though when I started filming from the other side of the table and I set up a proper backdrop for personal reasons I ended up leaving my masters in mid-2015 because I just didn't really like the research I was doing and I also didn't really see myself doing academic research as a career after my program I honestly had no idea what I was gonna do I knew that I loved teaching and making science videos but it just wasn't financially viable I spent the rest of 2015 just researching things that I might like to do took a business course and worked on several videos to say the least though the business course didn't really turn out when I sat down to actually study for the final I figured I'd you know look up what the actual exam date was and it turns out that it was three days earlier so I never finished that course at the time I had already kind of decided that I would dedicate another year to the channel and see what happens so I thought this whole incidence was kind of funny but I mean it's not great I opened a patreon in early 2016 and it was pretty amazing because it allowed me to not lose money with every video that I made it also allowed me to really dedicate myself to making videos full time over the year more people started noticing my videos and I really felt like the channel was going somewhere around that time I hit 40k subs and I honestly thought it was going to be the most that I'd ever have I figured there just couldn't be more than 40,000 people who would you know want to sub to me the first major milestone for the channel was at the end of 2016 when I hit 100k subscribers I honestly can't really describe exactly how it felt but it was one of the first things that I'd done in a long time that I was truly proud of I did plan to make a proper thank-you video at the time but I just kept getting distracted by new projects and it was never made in any case it was at this point so early 2017 that I was financially stable enough to continue making videos indefinitely it also suddenly hit me that it had already been a year since I failed that business course and that this was probably something that I was going to continue to do as a career it was definitely a weird feeling when I realized this and it still kind of feels weird when I think about it with this realization though I doubled down and spent even more time and money on the channel in hindsight this was a pretty big turning point for the channel because I started to write proper intros proper scripts and I just put a lot more effort into just all the design and the editing that goes into the video making I slowly bought more equipment chemicals and I even started selling merchandise everything expanded like crazy since then and unfortunately I eventually ran out of space it started becoming a huge annoyance to film videos and quite honestly a hazard it was also impossible to properly store everything and my workspace was constantly shrinking at the beginning of this year I made the big decision to rent out a space and to build a proper lab in studio it was surprisingly hard to find a place that fit all my requirements but I did eventually find one it was originally two rooms but with the help of my dad we cut a hole in the wall and installed the doorway [Music] the idea was to set up the lab in the room with the windows and to keep the one with the green wall as a studio with a proper lab I wanted a fume hood and I was really lucky to find one locally at a very good price the fume hood guy also sold me an oven a large centrifuge and a chemical fridge for a total of 3,500 it really was an amazing deal the next struggle though was getting the fume hood into the room I had to dismantle the entire thing in the truck and then carefully transfer it to a dolly this whole time though I wasn't even sure if it would fit through the door of the room I was really scared that we get it up there and then just have to bring it all back down we took the door off the hinges and I held my breath as we pulled it through it kind of got stocked but with some more pulling we did get it in getting it from the truck to the room took about three and a half hours and it was probably the single hardest part of this whole project in my opinion it was worth it though but for the time being I'm choosing not to think about the nightmare of having to move it out I looked into buying proper lab cabinetry and stuff but it turned out to be way too expensive so I went the cheaper route and just built the entire thing from Ikea I built the 3d version of it on their website and then submitted my order the next major piece to get was the flooring I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I could do with the industrial carpeting that was already there I had permission to tear it up but if I did I'd have to recarpet it when I leave so I figured it would be better to just leave it and to cover it with something the solution I found were these big vinyl rolls that are normally used for garage flooring on top of all this I had to pick up a bunch of tools tables chairs chemical storage cabinets building supplies and whatever else goes into making a studio in a lab I also had to learn a whole bunch of stuff about construction and building things in general I started this project on January 10th and it took my dad and I two months to get everything built so now that is pretty much done this is what it looks like I mean it's still a pretty big mess the office is wasn't exactly my biggest priority so I set the lab up first and have kind of been doing little bits of work here and there I was able to set up this table and you know a little area to do research for videos and to also do some editing I have my fridge little microwave and you know some food but it really hasn't been a priority to set this side up on the other side of this door though is the lab which is more or less done I decided to go with this sliding door because it was on sale at Home Depot but also because I did want something to cover it but I didn't want to have to set up you know cold proper swinging door and this is gonna stay open most of the time so I don't really see a sense in going through all that hassle but anyway on the other side is the lab so this is basically it here I have my paces separated them all have basis and then formaldehyde and some other you know large storage flammable solvents here's the main storage of the dry chemicals so I have bunch of elements these stuff to be started properly because they technically shouldn't be you know all together but anyway so here are my organics then I have my in organics and drying agents and other you know miscellaneous things this little bucket back here is all my poisons so things like cyanide mercury compounds lead compounds etc in this fridge here explosion-proof fridge that I got is basically all my solvents in the smaller bottles I also have my peroxide back there and other various you know liquid chemicals just to keep them it's better in my opinion it's better than keeping it just you know opening a storage cabinet in this one I have my acids so I have my muriatic my glacial acetic acid you know some vinegar here nitric separated from everything else and you know the sulphuric completely separated I did the very safe thing of scratching out the water label but making sure to label it properly with sulfuric acid that's proper safety so top here I'm still figuring out how to organize all this stuff these are just these are all my dies and other indicators and stuff and here are my products that I have from videos that I'm currently working on I have this too so there's yeah things that I need to test and you know do follow-ups after I've made the actual compound these are just things that I have not sorted yet and you know things I'm running low on so I don't really want to put them into storage over here is my sink which was a whole ordeal to set up because I don't have running water in here and I could have paid I think it was a few thousand dollars to have running water but I didn't really see the need because I don't really use running water very much except for when I wash and I'm just gonna be doing that in a basin like this I'm gonna obviously switch this out for clean water when I actually clean the glassware but I figured it would be just good to save water in general so this is kind of reserved for safety or emergency hand-washing and the way that it works is back here I have a pump here is clean distilled water and here is where the drain leads into so normally if you turn on the tap nothing happens I set up this little button here and if you click it you'll hear something maybe and that's the the pump turning on so now when I turn on the tap water comes out I mean it's not exactly this beautiful stream but it works and if I pull this and then turn it on I get my eye wash so emergency eyewash emergency hand wash out of that I just used the distilled water in this bottle which I refill from up here and in the drawers are just you know various random things there's like bags and cotton balls yeah and this one's empty I didn't think there's anything in there above is just cleaning supplies here is the oven that I got which I used to dry my glassware and forever it's any experiment that needs you know an oven basically gloves are stored back here along with torches and flammable things I even have a I do have a rotovap but I haven't set it up yet cuz it needs to have its own vacuum pump don't have that can't afford it right now so it's kind of just sitting here there's also this full-size centrifuge that fits full flasks but it used to be in this little gap right here but I took it down to the film part of this video and I didn't have the strength to lift it back up I've noted how much of ways but it's it's probably oh but 200 pounds or something crazy but it can fit entire flasks meaning for large-scale preparations I can do you know I can put my entire reaction flask in there and spin it down in every door I filled it with something so I'm here grad cylinders round bottoms you ever have bigger round bottoms here I have my filtration flasks here's other miscellaneous stuff like heating Mantle's a dremel Bunsen burner whatever and at the bottom I have on my secretory funnels and addition funnels so basically every single drawer is you know pack to something except this cupboard which is just for some power and the reason for this is that if you look here I have these lights set up and the power leads into here and I have it set up wirelessly so I have this little remote that when I click the button I can turn these lights on and off it seems kind of fancy but it actually was a lot easier than having to wire everything up and to you know put a proper switch in the wall these all have my tools I had to buy all this stuff to put the lab together there's just random stuff I think this has my my desiccator then I have you know distillation stuff distillation adapters Oh my beakers and everything filtering stuff you know so basically every drawer is packed with something when I first got this place I thought there's gonna be a total waste that I got you know so many drawers but turns out that I actually am using them you know every single one for something which honest it honestly surprised me how much stuff I had here I have my two cameras which I now used to film I used to only use one button November I got this new gh 5 so I can now film 2 experiments at once and my productivity is gonna go up quite a bit underneath the table here I have to set this all up properly I have my water recirculate ur from my condensers and stuff and then I have my water recirculate or vacuum pump which I take out what I need but I want to get them both on a trolley so I can push it around to you know the different work benches and it doesn't have to just sit on the floor here and this thing which was probably the hardest thing to set up out of everything you know I had to as I said before bring it up to this place which was a huge pain had to get it onto this bench top repainted the whole thing and then I had to just you know figure out how I'm even gonna ventilated to the outside so turn the light here if you look up here there's you know a little fan researched one that was compatible with chemicals that's not going to spark list oh it's not gonna ignite any solvent vapor and when I turn on the fan now I can control the speed here it uh blows all the air to the outside and unfortunately it just gets blown don't if I can show you here it just gets blown directly out the window so this does severely limit the experiments that I can do because there's no way I can pump anything really corrosive or anything dangerous because there's just gonna be going to the outside of the building I can't risk anyone breathing it in so it does limit in the sense I can't do any chlorine pumping can't produce crazy amounts of nitrogen dioxide and I can't do you know generally very dangerous things but I didn't plan to do it here anyway because it I didn't feel safe doing that so this this fume hoods mostly for solvents so I can pretty much do almost anything I want i I am limited by a couple things and I will have to go back home to my house and do it in the backyard or outside if I want to do those things but that's not the end of the world some of you might be wondering the final cost of all this and well it wasn't cheap I tallied it all up and assuming I'm not missing anything the price so far has been about 18,000 Canadian I saved as much money as I could but in the end building and furnishing two entire rooms is pretty expensive there's still a whole bunch of work to do though especially on the studio side but I'm gonna space it out over the next few months even though I've had this place for a while now I still can't really believe that it's reality the idea that I could afford to do this by making YouTube videos is kind of crazy so because of this I have to give a massive thanks to all my viewers and to everyone who has supported me especially to my dad who spent countless hours helping me put it all together also a very special thanks goes to everyone on patreon who have directly donated to me there would have been close to a zero percent chance of affording this without their help anyway I think that's about it let me know what you guys think so far and feel free to share any suggestions that you might have [Music]

Channel: NileRed

Views: 258,294

Rating: 4.9809322 out of 5

Keywords: nile, red, science, new, lab, chemistry, how

Id: 8mk4Q5omv3Q

Length: 19min 3sec (1143 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 29 2018