- This is what it looks like
to close out a year of your life
trying to answer one of life's most basic questions.
Exactly how high can elephant toothpaste
actually be launched into space?
Now, if this looks sort of familiar,
it's because this isn't my first attempt.
Last year, my buddy Fletcher and I
were here with this monster of a flask
but with one critical oversight.
We didn't make the floor stiff enough
because I just didn't consider the forces to be so high
they'd lift a one ton structure five feet into the air,
and so, while that attempt
did yield a new Guinness World record of 60 feet,
I couldn't stop thinking about just how high
it could have gone if only all that stuff
that came out of the bottom was actually forced
to come out through the top.
Like, what would happen if I spent the year
designing and building something that weighed five tons
and was basically bombproof?
And then what if we could just go on
to make the world's most epic surprise party
by building a massive slip and slide skateboard ramp,
along with the 26 million Orbeez pool,
plus a devil's toothpaste explosion
two and a half times bigger than previously.
Then, the only thing that would be missing
would be someone to throw the surprise party for,
and that's where my new friend Brody comes in.
Now, to understand who Brody is,
all you really need to know
is that as him and his family were going through
an incredibly difficult time in their lives
as he narrowly fought through his battle
against blood cancer for three years,
Brody used his one and only Make-A-Wish chance
to buy a brand new ATV for another kid with cancer
He didn't even know
when he heard that kid had his ATV stolen.
By the way, I told my friend, Mr. Beast,
this story, and he had some thoughts
on what we should do about this situation.
So now that we had a plan for the
surprise party and a kid who definitely
deserved the world's most epic surprise party,
it was time to return to my buddy Dale's walnut farm
in the small town of Gridley, California and get to work.
And while I'd love to take credit
for single-handedly digging out in the entire Orbeez pit
the truth was as word got out about Brody's story,
the good people of Gridley came out to help in droves.
So Arnie here, who's been operating a backhoe for 60 years
volunteered to dig the Orbeez pool,
while Dave, the town master carpenter,
started working on the skateboard ramp.
I even harnessed some child labor to prep
the devil's toothpaste troughs.
Although, it sort of backfired
when they began to protest against their
harsh working conditions.
Which just left my nemesis,
the giant elephants toothpaste flask.
And this time, I was taking no chances.
And so for the base, we laid a concrete pad
which would be attached to the flask
with 33 quarter inch bolts
with a total clamping force of 80 tons.
And then instead of a structure made of two by fours
the plan was to use five tons
of steel all fused together by the town welder, Jeff.
On top of that, we designed the flask to be 20% bigger.
So now all we needed was a 20 second
build montage to get it all done.
(upbeat music)
And so as the party construction continued on
for several days in the 105 degree heat,
let me take a moment to try and
debunk a myth about elephant toothpaste
floating around on the internet.
There are some wildly popular videos on YouTube,
some with over 30 million views
and hundreds of thousands of likes
which demonstrate that when you simply add a bunch of soda
to some Orbeez and then create a mento Sprite solution
and pour it over the top, you get this,
which is pretty impressive.
- Look at that.
- This also works with Mentos.
Why didn't Mark Rober tell us that?
- Maybe he didn't want us to break his record?
- True.
- Now I had a slightly different hypothesis
which was that these guys were faking the science
and lying to people for YouTube views.
So as firm believers in the scientific method,
Science Bob and I tested that hypothesis.
And as it turns out, if you follow their exact methodology,
then combine the mixtures and run real fast,
exactly nothing happens.
And even if you don't trust our demonstration
well then you're gonna have to explain how
the balloon shadow somehow stops right here
at the edge of the hole.
And where these orange globs are splashing up from,
and how the hole itself completely changes shape
from this frame to this one
once they've removed their layer mask.
The way they actually did that is the same way
elephant toothpaste is always made.
And that's to mix the correct amounts of hydrogen peroxide
soap and food coloring.
Then you just add a catalyst like potassium iodide.
And in preparation for this year's party
we also played around with
the devil's toothpaste formula we discovered last year
with, at times,
very interesting results.
Now, as a reminder, this is normal elephant's toothpaste,
and this is devil's toothpaste.
It reacts insanely fast, and I don't give out the formula
because it's super dangerous, even if you are, for example
wearing some very nice protective gloves.
And so back in Gridley
with Brody's arrival slated for the next morning,
the afternoon turned into the evening
as the feverish pace of work
continued late for the third night in a row.
If this dang mega flash somehow bested me again
at least I could console myself in the fact
that it wouldn't be from lack of effort.
And so when morning came with only a few last minute bits
of preparation left to go, I headed to a doctor's office
about an hour and a half away where Brody thought he flew
out to see some more specialists
for a day filled with medical tests.
- Okay, we ready?
- Okay. Okay. Thank you.
- Fletcher and his incredible hair also came back
out to help with the surprise.
And I just wanna preemptively say
I know I'm quite possibly the world's suckiest actor.
- Well. I'm Dr. Fletcher. We got a lot of stuff
to look at, tests
um, 'cause today,
this actually isn't a doctor appointment at all.
- And while I think I'm being all tricky here,
he later said he figured out it was me
as soon as he heard my terrible doctor accent.
- What up buddy?
I actually brought someone to help us out today too.
This is Fletcher. Fletcher here,
He was with us last year.
We did a big party.
So today we're gonna do another party and it's gonna be fun.
You brought someone with you?
- Gavin.
- Gavin. Let's go meet Gavin.
How's it going buddy?
- I followed you when I was like six.
I've known you for so long. I love your videos.
Oh, this is, oh, thank you.
This is Fletcher.
- Hi, nice to meet you.
- Nice to meet you.
- And that's Ila, Fletcher's sister.
All right, let's bounce. Here we go.
So step one is to get in the Tesla.
- So, we actually have, and I'll leave this up to you guys.
We have two ways to get to Gridley.
Option one is to take the Tesla.
Does anyone want to prematurely just say they
want option one?
Or do you want to hear option two?
- I wanna hear option two.
- You sure? It's a Tesla!
Okay. Option two.
And again, you guys get a vote on this.
Private jet.
- Option two.
- Have you guys ever ridden on a private jet?
- No!
- Let's ride on a private jet.
- Your guys' private jet is ready.
- Private jet's ready!
Remember guys, act like we've done this before.
And the private jet was definitely out of my budget,
but a generous benefactor caught wind
of what we were doing and let us use his
which actually helped because it cut the one
and a half hour drive down to just 12 short minutes.
- So guys, we just landed.
- I knew it.
- I knew it was a limo.
- Only the finest.
- We live in luxury!
- And so after a short trip
in a sweet ride, Brody had arrived.
(group cheering)
(upbeat music)
- So now that the party was rolling
and we were feeling refreshed,
it was time to head over to see some explosive chemistry
in the form of six massive devil's toothpaste troughs.
Now I need to pause here to make two points.
The first is that because each trough holds two and a half
times more volume than the barrels last year,
we couldn't just dump it on the top
because it reacts so fast, the catalyst wouldn't
even make it to the bottom before it was launched out.
So each trough that contained the mixture
of the hydrogen peroxide, soap, and food coloring
basically has a massive syringe attached to the side
that contains the catalyst.
Then we put a big fat pressurized air tank here.
So when you open this butterfly valve, the air would rush
into this chamber, thereby sliding the piston
over and causing everything to mix really well.
And as you can see in real life, this happens pretty fast.
And the second is you might notice it looks like one
of the troughs already kind of went off.
And the truth is, when I walked up, things looked like this.
We tested for so many different things to prepare for this
but one thing we didn't think to test was if the
food coloring manufacturer added some new ingredient
only to the purple color.
So now it randomly reacts with hydrogen peroxide
all on its own.
So after a bit of leaf blowing, we were ready to power
through even if we did lose two
of our six troughs to that little mishap.
- Here we go. Here we go. Here we go.
- 3, 2, 1.
(exclamations and cheers)
- Let's check it out.
Yes. Oh my goodness.
Oh, you can feel the heat.
- Oh, it's hot.
- Fletcher, we have a camera.
Go get the cameras.
- Where are they?
- Right in the middle.
- All right, I got it.
- What'd you guys think?
- That was crazy!
- And so while I helped clean up like a bonafide ghostbuster
we had to get all hands on deck
to prepare for the grand finale mega flask.
Like last year, the idea was to start the reaction
by having these troughs dump the catalyst
into the hydrogen peroxide pool below.
So chemicals had to be loaded in super carefully
because even if a small amount
splashed out prematurely, we'd have
an even more disastrous situation
on our hands than with the purple food coloring.
But Brody still had no idea that was coming.
So we distracted him with a different surprise first
in the form of some quality time in 26 million Orbeez
(upbeat music)
- Submersing yourself in millions
of Orbeez is such a wild feeling
because it's like having a squishy
slippery weighted blanket compressing all
around you no matter where you move.
And while we could have stayed there
for a few more hours, soon enough, we got the message
that the flask was in its final preparations.
So we all headed back over.
And word apparently had spread at this point.
So quite a crowded gathered, including the mayor of Gridley.
So the pressure was really on for me to finally avenge
that L from last year and to get Brody a dang world record.
- Look at this.
- And so with that all that was left now
was to place all our hopes and dreams
on our engineering abilities and dump the troughs.
- 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
(screaming and cheering)
- We actually had a pressure sensor in the flask
and it turns out the force
pushing all the elephant toothpaste
out the top is about 50 times the force you
feel when pushing against a fully inflated football.
- Oh my God, yes.
- That was so cool.
The mannequin.
The mannequin is still there.
- Wow. Oh, look at that.
It's like a volcano.
Whoa. See, it's still like barfing out the top.
- Oh my gosh.
- Is that better than going to the doctor's office?
Look how far over it went.
Wow. The flask stayed together.
You got me once, elephant's toothpaste.
You don't get me twice.
- And in fact, when you do a side-by-side comparison
of the max height from last year to this year,
I'm happy to report we absolutely destroyed
the previous record by nearly a factor of five,
rising to the height of a 25 story building at 250 feet.
And so with the new Guinness World record under his belt
I still had one grand final surprise for Brody.
So back at the house while science Bob distracted the crowd
with liquid nitrogen powered exploding watermelons
and trash can rockets nearly taking
out our drone pilot Nerc in the process.
I called up a friend of mine.
- What up buddy?
- Hi, what up MrBeast? This is my friend Brody.
We've been hanging out all day today.
- How's it going?
Did he do the Orbeez thing?
He told me he got 25 million Orbeez.
- Yeah.
- Yeah. Is that more Orbeez than you did?
- No.
- We had a pool though.
I think MrBeast has one more surprise.
- Do me a favor and turn around real quick.
- Oh my God, that's your hog right there.
Delivered by none other then Dale himself.
Well get on buddy.
It's not mine, it's yours.
- And what's cool here is this is the exact model
he wanted to get for himself
before he gave it away to someone else.
And he didn't do that expecting to get something back
in return, just like those who worked so hard
to put this party together for him
didn't expect anything either.
Which is why I believe when you try to be a good person
it may not always come back to you immediately,
but somehow it always comes back.