Hey, guys! Welcome back, I'm Nate.
Thank you for joining me today on the King of Random
Recently we posted a video showing our new mini solar scorcher. In that video
there are a few ideas that several people asked to see us do. So today
we're gonna try out five of those ideas
and see how they turn out. Here are the five experiments
we'll be trying today, because so many of you asked for them!
First we'll try focusing the giant solar scorcher
through the mini solar scorcher to see how that affects the shape of the beam the power and the heat
that it puts out. Several of you wanted to see if the
mini solar store could melt metal the same way the giant solar scorcher did.
We're gonna try a few different types of metal and see how it performs.
Next lots of you wanted to know if the mini solar scorcher got hot enough to ignite thermite
We tried lighting thermite with the big solar scorcher, and it ignited almost immediately, which was pretty cool.
So we'll see if the small version can ignite it and how fast it does in comparison to the giant one. Next several of you
wanted to see if we could cook food with the mini solar scorcher so we have a couple of recipes plans that should be just
the right size! And lastly, several of you for whatever reason wanted us to destroy the little solar scorcher using the giant solar scorcher,
so we're gonna do that as well.
Let's take this outside, set up the mega solar scorcher,
and let's get started. You all remember the mega solar scorcher;
and now we have our mini solar scorcher as well. Before we line them up with each other
let's try and take a look at the difference between their focal points.
I have this baby powder, which I'll spray into the air to try and light up the focal point of the mega solar scorcher.
There you have it.
Right there
See if we can-- it's a little bit windy out here today, which is not making it easier.
But up here the light is widely dispersed and as you get down here. It gets brighter and more focused.
So it looks like our focal point here
Is right about there.
And I'm not gonna put my finger in it because it would burn. Even just getting
near the focal point-- like my finger is very warm right here. Just the excess radiating heat
Now let's see how it looks on the miniature solar scorcher.
Oh, beautiful! You can see that really well because this is a smaller lens and it's closer to the focal point you get a lot more
focus out of it. You can really see how it comes down in a cone
hits in the middle and then spreads out in a cone again. Now our goal is to set up the miniature solar scorcher in the
focusing path of the mega solar scorcher.
We don't want to put it where it's focused because I'm pretty sure that would just melt the lens very quickly
We're going to try and line it up so that the focal point of the mega solar scorcher is the same size as the lens
on the mini solar scorcher.
Alright that looks like it's about the right spot,
still projecting a little bit onto the wood of the solar scorcher, but it's not bad.
Woah-p!
Well I can definitely light it through one screen and then through the next screen.
I now have a little bit better of an idea of how far down
I put the miniature solar scorcher.
So I'm gonna try and lower it into place until I can see that the focal point is right on the edges of the wooden
frame then. I'm gonna try spraying the baby powder underneath it so we can try and capture what the focus light is doing.
There!
You see it's darker around the edges of the frame warm in the center-- see if we can get some baby powder spraying.
It's a narrower, shorter focus usually the miniature solar scorcher focuses maybe eight inches away from the lens and now it's focusing
barely four. It's cut the distance probably in half.
I also don't think that it's quite as clean of a focus as when it's just filtering sunlight.
I'm going to try and put this stick right into the focal point of our mega solar scorcher.
Yep. Very, very hot lights pretty much instantly.
Lined it, up there we go.
Now with that lined up, let's try and put our stick in that focal point. Well, it is clearly hot. It's still igniting very fast;
but, I would say it is taking a little bit longer to light on fire.
than with the big solar scorcher by itself. So the sunlight is coming in through the mega solar scorcher,
focusing onto the miniature solar scorcher, and then being focused again. A lot of people were hoping that you would get sort of a
you would get sort of a super, extra, hot heat.
But let's talk about why that might not be the case.
The fernell lens that makes up the mega solar scorcher is taking all of the sunlight
over a giant area about two feet wide by four feet long
and it's condensing that much sunlight down into a single point. That gets really, really hot.
There's a lot of heat coming out of the Sun.
When I try and focus all of that light through the miniature solar scorcher
it doesn't really get any more intense because there's no
additional sunlight coming through the miniature solar scorcher. All of the sunlight that would have hit the miniature solar scorcher is being intercepted by the
mega solar scorcher. All that really happens is I lose a little bit of sunlight from the
distortion on the lens on the mega solar scorcher. There's also the fact that any light coming from the Sun is traveling in almost a
perfectly straight line between the Sun and the mega solar scorcher. At that point, it goes in an extreme angle
And so it's already highly angled going into the miniature solar scorcher instead of all of the light coming in one direction
we have light coming in sort of a cone shape from all directions. As a result instead of the light coming through mostly straight and
focusing about eight inches away; it's coming through at an angle and focusing even closer
I think that makes it harder for it to get a nice pinpoint of light.
The next thing we're gonna, try is melting metal.
I have a few different types of metal and we'll try them all. I should also note that today is not quite as warm and
sunny as some other days that we've tested melting metal with the mega solar scorcher. So your results may vary.
First up is a penny.
Which is almost entirely made of zinc at least this one from
1984 is. I've chosen a fairly, dirty old one because it won't reflect as much light.
Have some smoke, I think the penny might be just transferring heat into the board below it.
Look the copper is bubbling like peeling away.
Holy cow! I think it's actually melting it. Look at that. It's kind of collapsing in places. It's
bulging up in the middle right where it's focused.
I'll be honest,
I did not think the mini solar scorcher was gonna have enough power to do anything to a penny, but slowly, but surely
It is destroying it.
Look down at the base of the penny where the light isn't quite as focused it's still hot enough that it's starting to
bulge. I think the zinc
inside the copper might be melting. Like, I think the heat is enough to melt the zinc
But not the copper and so it's all pooling down at the bottom of the penny.
I've got my board on a little bit of a slant, and so I think there's liquid zinc
inside there. Aww-- that's insane. I didn't think this was gonna work at all.
I love when I'm wrong! You get the coolest experiment results when you're wrong all right. Let's see how that has turned out-- holy cow.
Alright, I'm gonna. Spray some water on this. It should be nice and hot.
Yeah all the water right around it just immediately evaporates.
Whoa
Wow, that is one
Destroyed penny. That is so cool. I did not think the mini solar scorcher could do that!
Look at the back of this thing.
Let's see what's next. This is lead fishing weights. Lead has a pretty low melting temperature
So I'm fairly optimistic that we can at least get these to soften up.
That is starting to melt yep
Okay that took all of like five seconds.
And yep, and it's liquid and there's a little hole in the bottom of this pot, and it just fell right down through the hole
Under the brick below, so lead melts extremely fast with the solar scorcher. Well one melted pretty quick;
let's see what we can do with six!
Whose instructional integrity there we go, that's collapsed.
A little shake every few seconds to try and get it to puddle more.
There you have it I would say that the solar scorcher absolutely can melt lead. That melted easily in fact.
All right, I've got one more metal I want to try. This is a block of pewter
I'm gonna see how the solar scorcher does with it. I'm not gonna try and melt the whole block
I'm just hoping that it will melt a little bit in the center it might dissipate the heat too fast
So it won't do that, but let's give it a try.
Doesn't even feel warm. I can't get a spot of the block to melt and I think it's because it's just dissipating the heat
Too quickly into the rest of the brick so what I'm gonna try doing is slicing off a small bit of our pewter block
Putting it on the terracotta pot and then trying to melt that instead.
Oh! Immediately something starts happening
Yep, melting... melting... melting.
It all just kind of shriveled up.
Now that actually fused onto the terracotta pot a little bit. That's interesting.
Many people wanted to know if the miniature solar scorcher could light off thermite as easily as the mega solar scorcher.
So I've mixed up a small batch of thermite
I'm gonna pour it into these terracotta pots and try and light it.
I am a little nervous that this could just go off really suddenly
So I'm just gonna try and focus it and then as soon as I see anything. I'm kind of gonna
just jump out of the way.
Here we go!
Well that is just neat!
Gonna kick it over.
I think they're all fused together with thermite, oh, there's one. I think that's it
I think it's just a puddle of iron at the bottom of that. Now up next several
of you wanted to see us try and cook with the mini solar scorcher.
So we've got some mini recipes that we're gonna cook today. Now first up
We have a hot dog, but this is a mini solar scorcher
So a whole hot dog seems like it might be a little too much.
So instead we're gonna go with one little slice. Let's get a nice cross-section piece here.
There we go.
Little slice of hot dog.
I'm going to try and focus the solar scorcher down on to it.
Not all the way because that would just burn it, but just until the focal point is the size of the hot dog slice itself
There is some steam rising off of it. Oh, and it's starting to get a little bit up
Oh too much! Too much!! Too much heat. Now that spot is burned
It's black and it absorbs a lot more of the heat. It's sort of a-- an ongoing
self-sustaining problem.
Oh-- another burn spot
Well, I think that side is pretty well done as well.
That's actually fairly warm. So that's a good sign that it's cooked all the way through
Serve with one potato chip.
You can really taste the sunshine. For our next recipe nacho! Just one. We've got one corn chip here
Add some cheese. Let's see if we can melt our cheese with our lens. All right now. Let's melt some cheese
Oh, no!
Almost lit my chip on fire had some good, melty cheese!
I think I'll call them sunlight nachos!
Nacho, just nacho. There ya go.
It's a good nacho. I wonder if the mega solar scorcher could make a whole plate at once. Let's find out
That works considerably better, I'm just moving the focal point
Around at different unmelted bits of cheese, and that melts them pretty fast.
Of course it also almost lights the chips on fire.
There ya go, that's some good melty, stringy cheese right there.
That's pretty good.
If you've ever made nachos in the microwave. It makes your chips kind of chewy. This doesn't-- makes crunchier if anything.
Well, one more thing I have to try.
I call these flaming hot nachos
Anyone want a bite? it's a little much for me. I can't handle hot food very well.
Now there is one more thing that a few of you wanted to see and that was me burning the small solar scorcher
with the mega solar scorcher.
All right! That's about where I had it focused when I was trying to focus one through the other
Let's take it down a little more
It's melting! It's burning! Mmm! *Sarcastic tone* I love that burning plastic smell, that's the best!
Oh man don't burn these lenses smells awful. Well, the frame is made of wood. I bet it lights on fire really nice
It does! It does light on fire very easily!
How not surprising!
Perfect!
Well there you have it! We have tried focusing the mega solar scorcher through the mini solar scorcher
We successfully melted a few different types of metal with our mini solar scorcher.
We are able to ignite thermite with our mini solar scorcher and cook some delicious food.
We had a single serving of hot dog. And one nacho
And then we use the mega sole torture to completely destroy one of the mini solar scorchers.
Rest in pieces.
I really hope you've enjoyed seeing these projects today and learning some new things that you can do with your mini solar scorcher
Thanks for joining us for this video today, and we'll see you in the next one talk to you then!
Bleh, solar scorcher is tough to say when you try and say it a hundred times
Hey guys, thanks so much for caring about our content and our channel so much!
It really is amazing to have great people like you
Jumping in to watch every new video that gets uploaded and watching it to the end. You really are
amazing and we appreciate you for that!
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