Turning Seashells Into Glass (Debunking Viral Videos)

today we're going to be putting a viral video to the test and seeing what happens if we submerge seashells and a few types of acid guys if you haven't checked out our shop lately then you are missing out we have a handful of old project build kits up for sale including cool builds like the micro crossbow the crossbow is simple to make imp can fire things like matches and sparklers to over 30 feet away the kit has everything you need and is ready to assemble so you don't have to worry about spending your time going to the store and picking things up it's all ready to go for you if you want to go and get one now you can check it out in the link below alright guys so there was a video that was sent to us by a few different people and in it it showed a seashell that looked quite a bit like this one and they put it in whether they said was a cup of white vinegar and I think it was that after 24 hours they just showed they pulled the shell out and it had gone completely clear the structure was identical it almost looked like it was made out of glass it did it looked like a glass seashell and so a lot of people wanted to see if it was real I have my doubts personally I don't think it's going to work but it did seem pretty interesting here's the basic idea we have a bunch of seashells I'm gonna try a couple things out we're gonna submerge several of them in different types of acid and we're gonna see what happens if we put some in our foundry we normally say that bones teeth shells things like that are made out of calcium but the thing is is we're actually shortening that calcium isn't what these things are made out of it's calcium carbonate it's a little bit different calcium carbonate reacts generally speaking with acid so we've got several types of acid including white vinegar and we want to see what these sea shells do in the different types of acid including we are going to take one of these shells put in acid and we're just gonna leave it overnight we're gonna put a time-lapse camera on it so everyone can see what it does or doesn't do well we do want to try the vinegar absolutely but that one is supposed to sit overnight so we should probably get that one started we do have a few different types of acid I wanted to try the other way but you said you tested this with a basic yes so acids are on one side of the pH scale from water which is neutral and bases are on the other acids anything below 7 bases are above we have done cool stuff with bases before if you saw our soda can experiment where we said in drain cleaner that was a very powerful base and it reacted a lot with the aluminum but I tried it just as an experiment I left a seashell in some of that same exact drain cleaner for four days and nothing happened to it at all so didn't even change the coloring or anything no color no texture no bubbles zero reactions so we're gonna stick with acids for today and we've got four types here we have sulfuric acid vinegar which contains acetic acid now this is probably 5% acidity five treatment is usually what you're going to find in anything you buy for the yep for cooking that's as strong as it's usually gonna get what you got over here I've got some nitric acid this is 70 percent so we're gonna be very careful with this one today and we've got some muriatic acid which is a diluted form of hydrochloric acid for different types of acid and a whole lot of shells so I think we should start seeing what they do so a little sea shell here okay and exercise we don't really have to worry about being splashed here I want some sulfuric acid down on to it see what it does I'm seeing a little bit of bubbling coming off of that shell it's nothing extreme nothing's happening very quickly but I do see some bubbles so should I just leave it off to the side yeah I'm gonna add in a little bit more so the shell is completely covered flipped upside down I guess that's good cuz acids gonna get inside it too let's go ahead and start with the muriatic and then we'll move on to the nitric sounds good woo that's exciting go and open up all the doors and windows and very curious as to what it looks like but we're waiting until we actually have something to pull it out with well the colors leeching out of it now I don't know if that color was a dye in the first place but oh look at that it looks like that's teeth now edge works thinner has dissolved through and where it's thicker it's still there so it looks kind of like a sawtooth thing just warm so many bubbles up at the top they get in the way of all the visual just keep letting that go for a few minutes is reacting quite a bit yeah but we've got more things to try let's see what the nitric acid does yep that also reacts hollow smaller smaller it's just like it has like the spout coming off the top of it interesting that we're getting such different looking bubbles I don't know if that's the kind of shell or the kind of acid can we pick my gosh yeah it's basically gone so if you look at this one that almost looks like what a bird's wing looks like is oh I can't really pick it up because all the pieces just break right off this looks like little pin feathers now all right I'm gonna get some water and some baking soda over here because I want to try and make a skeleton shell I wanna be able to put it in get it to the point where I like how it looks and then be able to neutralize it and see if we can actually go in to state our dangers all right periodic is what's giving us the cool results so in your attic again that was impressive chemical resistant gloves oh no I let it go too long but I got here ha all right well I did get that skeleton structure that I was going for but I didn't lose an entire side of it because this was maybe five minutes I think less this has got a lot of cool patterning on it let's see if it does anything to just the color well I don't know if it's some bleaching so much as it just dissolve the outer surface but it did pull some color off now a fun fact about seashells they usually only open on the right hand side so if you ever find a shell that's finished fairly open which means it's on the left hand side those apparently collectors will just go crazy about they shells are just formed this way kind of like right-handed people left-handed people it's more common to find shell that opens on the right so while we weren't paying attention the shell that was in our nitric acid just sort of went away I'm gonna put a new one in there and see I'll just go and take one of these little guys let's try that one more time and we'll actually pay attention and while that's going I'm gonna go and take this one looks good hey similar drop this into our muriatic give that a couple minutes to see what happens [Music] you know where the show is at this point what is left of it wait a skeletonized that's so cool that isn't he it's like a crown yes those are nearly identical I want to try and keep one of these it's a little bit more solidified cuz that's just cool and we said we were gonna be paying attention to the one that we put the nitric acid it's almost gone so that's less energetic looking but it seems to be dissolving the shell more completely yep I want to put one of our bigger shells into the nitric acid here something you need to take this pretty sure this was a some aquatic snail I'm just gonna put this down into our nitric acid and see what it does why is it the phone turning blue smoking it's hot it is so hot to the touch right now huh but this is so thin now I get what's in before but without even light if you see my glove right do that alright this is not gonna be our time-lapse test but just because I'm curious I want to see if the vinegar has any immediate reaction or you know our sulfuric acid seems to really not much has happened on that and I'm a little confused about that but I thought more would happen but we're gonna see what the vinegar does in terms of short-term reactions hmm not much it's having about the same reaction as our so fair guesses yeah so I'm gonna go ahead and put this one back into our nitric acid let it complete its journey into being completely dissolved that's pretty cool we've clearly shown that both muriatic acid and nitric acid dissolve these down to pretty much nothing we're getting very very mild reactions from our vinegar and our sulfuric acid but I think what we need to do is set up our time lapses with the vinegar and I wanted to do - I want to do one that's like the shell that closely resembles the one in the video and then another cup that just has a whole bunch of shells in it covered in vinegar and we can let both of those time lapse probably 24 hours see how they're doing tomorrow and then wow that time us was running we can also take some of these shells put them in our foundry and see what cooking invest it interesting I like that idea we've got our single little shell and we've got a whole cup full of shells we're going to take our vinegar set that up and then just time-lapse it to see what this is gonna do over about 24 hours let's pop it in the foundry and turn up the heat fantastic all right we had those shells up to one of their glowing orange it's really hard to sell because it's daylight out here and with the lid off it's pretty bright inside of our foundry but they're glowing orange with the lid on we could see that in through the little holes of drilled and lid and I think that's what we're going for at this point hopefully they've chemically changed now what we just need to do is let them cool down and we can do some tests to see if we've got wine guys we have let our shells cool down and we've let our shells set an acid overnight so it's time to see what's become of everything okay so this is all those on the top and this is the first thing that I noticed that's so cool it's actually coming apart in layers so you can see where it started splintering off and we saw with that the glaze coat melts so much shells are actually very shiny this one had sort of that shiny look to it but now that's shiny it's just flaking off you can see the next layer underneath and it's so fragile in my hand here's another one there's just on the top and it it sounds like I'm holding paper it does oh okay beautiful shell powder alright so we're gonna take this one we've got a little bit of broken shell down in there so from what I've researched cold water doesn't actually react too well with cooked sea shells but hot water should set it off fairly well so we've got some water on the stove I'm just gonna try pouring that over this and see what kind of reaction we start to get now if it's done what you want it to do what should the seashell we should get some we should get some bubbling and some vapors coming off of it as it produces an exothermic reaction so it should even heat up the water more it is already gonna be too hot to touch so I'm not gonna stick my finger in and see if it's getting hotter okay but we'll just keep an eye on it and we should see lots of bubbling if it's doing what we're looking for now that seashell is 75 degrees in your water if it will focus on water is 170 degrees hundred degree difference here [Music] it's just starting to fall apart I've been watching the breakdown on the inside here yeah something it's like there's only it's like watching a time-lapse sped up but in real life I mean it's definitely doing something it is dissolving this poor seashell it's less bubbling than I was kind of expecting to see I'm just gonna take some of these shells and grind them up into a fine powder and then add some water less bubbling than I was hoping to see but it is breaking the shell down quite a bit and I'm wondering a couple of things one I wondering if our furnace was hot enough to properly get the reaction we needed and I'm wondering if this water is hot enough to set off the reaction oh now we're seeing some bubbling that's cool yeah I had too much water you okay there we go too much water yeah that's back up to you not doing so great but just this right amount of water apparently that's the reaction we were hoping to see oh it smells terrible okay I think at this point we need to check out how our sea shells and vinegar are doing let's see if it actually works or if it's be bumped hmm here's our seashells cups do you see a clear seashell they're perfectly clear see down there yeah I have some doubts Magister we'll see if we can see if you hear a clink no see show no shoe show if you watch the time-lapse you're gonna see what happened there it worked exactly the same as it did with some of our acids it dissolves but at a slower rate so you can't really make a clear seashell this way guys it's just going to dissolve your seashells now I am also pretty interested in how little happened to our larger collection of shells I think that there's only so much dissolving that the vinegar can do and it probably did dissolve in fact you can see look at the the outside texture of this is sort of layered on this scallop now it did dissolve the shells a little bit but there was so much shell in there that I think it just had to run out of dissolving power well in some of the shells when we were putting them in the strong acids like the color was bleaching off first and very fast now this yellow color is actually coming off on my fingertips but it didn't completely leech it away it's still there this is a noticeable change because this was so shiny and like I'm actually getting like seashell paste yes yeah yeah so it did start to dissolve it a little bit and just we the overpowered the vinegar vinegar is not a very strong acid and we had a lot of shells in there disappointing that we don't have a couple of clear shells though alright so in the past you guys have seen us do multiple videos where we actually have dissolved the outside of a chicken egg and when you do that you get the the membrane on the inside it's kind of squishy you can make a rubber egg well the egg shell is made out of calcium carbonate it's exactly what sea shells are made out of so it was kind of no shock to us that we completely dissolved one of our sea shells because exactly the same stuff guys it's going to dissolve just the same in vinegar as an egg shell water there's the result of our paste that we made from putting our ground-up cooked sea shells into water it's not going to be the sturdiest stuff ever to really make a good cement we would want to mix it in with some things like clay dust or sand and few other composite materials but it is holding itself together it's not super strong I can break it but it's also not completely cured apparently from research it can actually take months or even years to 100% cure but it is holding itself together and you could use this as a form of mortar if you wanted to we've got a bunch of seashells here seashells seashells guys that's not all you know we've always got more if you see go ahead and click that box up the top to check out our latest video and we'll talk to you the next one see you then

Channel: TKOR

Views: 3,819,960

Keywords: sea shells in acid, sea shells in vinegar, turn sea shells to glass, turn seashells clear, blossom, viral videos, debunking viral videos king of random, hacks, 5 minute crafts, experiments, amazing experiment hacks, experiment hacks, transformation, blossom hacks, diy, life hacks, mythbusting, mythbusters, tkor, thekingofrandom, random happens, grant thompson, calli, nate, us first media

Id: X1b_QKdH3g8

Length: 15min 5sec (905 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 10 2019