Acetone, one of the world's
most popular solvents. Polystyrene, one of the world's
most popular plastics. What happens when
they go toe to toe? Find out tonight. [Music] Acetone is a common solvent. Polystyrene is easily dissolved. We want to see how much and how fast we can dissolve
this stuff in acetone. Guys, in the past, you watched us melt
a Millennium Falcon, which contaminated
a lot of acetone. We still have a lot
of acetone left. Like a lot of acetone left. Here's the basic idea. We've got lots of polystyrene. We've got lots of acetone. We're going to see how much of the polystyrene
can dissolve into that acetone, and then try out some creative
ways of combining the two. Guys, acetone is
a very popular solvent. And in fact, it's a very
popular nail polish remover when it's diluted. So you've probably seen
how effective it is when it takes off
nail polish or even paint. We want to show you what it does when it melts down
different types of polystyrene. Usually, you refer
to it as styrofoam. Technically, styrofoam is
a brand name of one type of extruded polystyrene. That's a closed
cell type of foam. It's used for insulation,
building materials, and a few other
things like that. It's become a pretty common term to describe any extruded
or expanded polystyrene. These things happen. Regardless of what it's called,
we're going to melt some of it. [Music] If you have ever used
nail polish remover before, or even been around someone who's used nail
polish remover before, you probably recognize
the scent of acetone. It's almost sweet, but you can tell that there's
definitely a chemical there. And if you get a lot of it, it's going to burn your sinuses
and your nostrils quite a bit. So be careful. You only want to be using this stuff somewhere
with good ventilation. So let's actually talk about some of the safety
precautions you want to take if you're handling
just straight acetone. Technically, your body produces
acetone in minute quantities. We're talking about if a couple of drops somehow accidentally
ended up in your mouth, it would be uncomfortable, but it wouldn't kill you. If you do accidentally swallow any,
call Poison Control. I bet it says that on it. It says that on the container. Basically, one entire side of this canister
is just a warning. If it gets on your skin, in most cases,
it will just dry it out, and it can
cause some irritation, and it'll make
it extremely cold. That's not because acetone
itself is extremely cold. That's the evaporation rate. The faster something evaporates, the colder your skin
is going to get if it's in contact with it. If I dip my finger in there, it cools it off because it
evaporates so quickly. It's even cooler than water. Now, if it hits your eyes,
you can have severe irritation. Again, call Poison Control. But skin, nails,
it's going to dry them out. But other than that, there's not going to be
a lot of harm done. So we're standing
in a well-ventilated area. We're pretty covered,
just as a precaution. We're wearing nitrile gloves, and nitrile actually
is susceptible to acetone's melting effects. So if you were to leave
this glove in there, as you probably have seen
in our Lego video, they would just fall apart. So short amount
of time, you're fine, but not for too long. Something else to look at, we are talking about
how it evaporates quickly. You can watch
how fast this evaporates. And it's gone. That's actually really
cool to watch. We've got a little bit
of this expanded polystyrene, and let's use this
as a first test. We're just going to dip this in for a second, and see
what it does to the ends. You can already
hear it hissing, and falling apart. So that was dipped in there
for like half a second, and just immediately
starts ruining it. Dipping it at a bit of an angle, so you can see more
clearly where it has and has not touched. Enough of it was
any acetone that time that actually dripped down in, and now, we have
this gooey polystyrene liquid. [Music] That's what's left. That whole brick that I had has now
just been dissolved into this liquid white goop. You can actually see that
underneath the melted plastic, Nate's gloves are
also falling apart. It just like loses its cohesion, and is starting to like
expand a little bit. Whereas on this hand, the gloves are
fairly tight fitting. On this hand, everywhere that I've been putting
in the acetone, it's just loose
and hanging off now. All right, that was awesome. But I think we need to scale
that up a little bit. [Music] Normally, acetone
is extremely clear. This is acetone that we did used
to dissolve Lego in, and they didn't get
completely cloudy or destroyed, but I think it's not quite as
clear as new acetone would be. This isn't our most
contaminated batch, but it is contaminated. That's true. Again, if you saw the Lego video where we melted the Millennium
Falcon in acetone, the first time we tried it, we had some off-brand Lego
sheets with some different formula of plastic, and it just turned
it like light blue. And as far as I can tell,
it's still like that. It hasn't changed a bit. What's next? We should know more stuff. So as we scale this up, we're going to start dyeing some
of our acetone different colors. This one's going to be green, mostly because this is really
reminding me of the dip from Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He's never seen it. Sorry. [Music] Wish this was shoe shaped. He doesn't understand
that reference. But neither do a lot of you. Ha! I know a bunch of you
weren't even born when that movie came out. I'm gonna melt some stuff now. Really does look
like it's dissolving in acid. That's pretty great. Well now I just feel sad. But not enough to stop. [Music] I can actually watch it just, as he's pushing it down,
just it feeding up. [Music] We've now put some polystyrene
into the acetone. I'm curious what happens if we apply the acetone
to the polystyrene. We've got a couple methods
we want to try. Coming up is the spray bottle. Polystyrene, we're using expanded
and extruded polystyrene. There is also
non-extruded polystyrene, and that's usually
in the form of a thin plastic, many plastic cups. If you have a white plastic cup, there's a good chance
that that is polystyrene. You'll be able to tell
by looking on the bottom, and if inside, a little triangle
about recycling, it says PS, that's for polystyrene. Don't put acetone
in one of those cups, you'll dissolve it. This is HPDE. It does not dissolve in acetone. Spray bottle full
of purple acetone, and some white
expanded polystyrene. See how this goes. [Music] Can definitely see the spray
pattern of this bottle. A new way to make cosplay armor, or decorate anything
out of foam. This is awesome. [Music] We've seen great results
with the expanded polystyrene. This stuff is
the extruded polystyrene. It's not quite
the same texture, little more dense, makes a more obnoxious sound
with gloved hands on it. You can stop that. Yeah. We can be done with that. We're going to try moving on
to our next application method, the paint roller. What I'm not so sure about though is what this paint roller
is made out of. So this may work, or it may just melt
the moment it touches it. We're going to find out. [Music] It's really not rolling
very well anymore. Spreading. Wow. Well, whatever this paint
rollers made out of, it is very resistant
to this stuff. Let's try an actual clean roll. [Music] This isn't a very
good paint roller. So the interesting thing is
the acetones evaporated so fast that this is almost solid again. Like it's squishy, but it's not sticking
to my fingertips. [Music] Huh, it rolls little easier
on this stuff. The acetone is absolutely
eating away at the expanded polystyrene more so
than the extruded polystyrene. So that's kind of interesting. I want to do a side-by-side. [Music] Okay, we are going to time how long it takes to melt
8 feet of polystyrene. Let's see which
one goes faster, and how long each one takes. First, establish the rules. We cannot push our pieces down. We are simply here
to steady them. On your mark, get set, go. Well, mine's just chasing yours. I'm holding it as upright
as this piece wants to go. It's just sort of floating. I mean, I knew yours
is going to go much faster. It's just-- Yours just has like
a structural integrity. [Music] I didn't realize you had like
a two point lead on me already. [Music] This was a fun game. All right. I am just past two
and a half feet, and yours is gone. Very young. [Music] At this point, your piece has actually
started to change the color of our dyed acetone. Like it started out reddish, now, it's kind of got a bit
of a purple tone to it. [Music] That's what's happening. That's what keeps
it breaking off. That's actually
really cool shape. And time. Not gone yet. Still going. 3 and 1/2 minutes versus... 11 minutes, 55 seconds. So close. We could still melt a whole lot
of other stuff in there. Shall we? We shall. [Music] Guys, that's not all. We've always got more
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