So I've invited my good friend Greg here over to the Royal Institution to have a bit
of a BBQ.
But to make it a bit more interesting I thought that we should do this BBQ without any coals.
Woah!
So we've come up with a few alternative ways of cooking with our food here. And Greg over
at the BritLab channel you're going to be using some chemistry?
Yeah, so we've gone for some quite hazardous chemistry processes to try to cook steak.
So if you're new here and you like what we do then feel free to reward us with a sub
and look out for the link at the end to go to the BritLab page and see Greg and me playing
around with some chemistry. And don't forget to subscribe to them when you're over there
as well.
So this little device is going to pump some mains electricity through a little bit of
steak. I've got our steak there, I've also got this bit of steak over here. I've been
soaking it in salt water to try and increase the conductivity and hopefully that will give
us some more action.
And clearly because you really like salty steak. Exactly. Exactly. Who doesn't love
a bit of salty steak.
Hopefully we should see some action but I'm not promising anything. - Ok great.
Ooh, we're getting some bubbles. It's fizzing.
And it's turning white. It's cooking!
It is cooking. - It's cooking!
It's working! - Huh.
So what's the setup here Andy? We're plugged into the mains...
Yeah, we're plugged into the mains. We're also plugged into a kettle down here.
There we go.
The kettle is actually just acting as a resistor, It's making sure I'm not drawing too much
current basically.
We're plugged into the mains, we have 240 volts passing through this steak.
So the electricity is going up through one fork,
conducting through the meat,
because you've put salt on it.
Ooh, lovely.
That's genius.
Smells alright, doesn't it? Oh there we go. There we go.
Quickly stepped away there!
So the reason why it's cooking is that we're pushing all these electrons through, all this
electricty through the steak. And as the electrons are being forced through, they're bumping
into all the other atoms in the steak and all the molecules and transferring all the
energy. Because the steak doesn't conduct that well, you have to push those electrons
really hard and then they transfer a lot of energy when they bump into things. So this
process is called Joule heating. Basically the way electricity heats things up as it
flows.
And that was orange as well, wasn't it. - It was orange.
So that's really interesting. Because I was soaking this in salt, sodium chloride, the
sodium ions in there, when the electricty passes through them, they excite the ions
and you get that orange glow which is the same orange you get in sodium streetlights.
The characteristic colour of sodium.
Safety first. - Indeed.
Exploding sausage and LEDs.
OK, ready? - Yeah.
It works! - Look at that.
You've got a meat circuit going on here.
That is amazing.
That's groundbreaking science happening right here at the Royal Insitution.
So what we're hoping to do is to... Well we were hoping to before it started to
pour with rain outside. - Good old British summer.
Was to use the sun's radiation to shine on the parabolic dish focussing all of that energy,
into one point of the focus of the parabola, to cook the steak. The parabola has this interesting
property that when you have parallel beams arriving on the parabola, all those beams,
wherever they hit the surface, all get reflected to the same poiint. So it's kind of collecting
all the energy that falls over this whole area and focussing it down to one point. So
you're actually creating an amazing amount of heat.
And is that why you've got two? So if you fire one at one, does that produce parallel
rays?
Exactly the same thing in reverse. So if you produce radiation at one focus it will spread
out and then get reflected and you'll have parallel beams and then obviously collected
at the other focus.
I'll tell you what, I'll look... Oh, it's going, it's going!
I thought I'd look next to it for smoke and we're getting smoke.
That doesn't look bad at all. I mean that's almost edible.
Yeah, I'd say that...
Should we try it? - I think we should.
You got that? And then flip it over. And the other side is rare.
A bit warm. -Let's go for it.
Sorry, I've thoroughly manhandled your bit but you know.
Thanks, mate.
It's delicious.
That's great.
That's another winner. -That is another winner.
This is going so much better than we ever thought it would.
I've got a little bit of alcohol at the bottom. It's isopropyl alcohol which is not your regular
ethanol kind. So I'm sloshing this around.
So in there we have the alcohol mixed with the oxygen in a vapour so it's a perfect combustible mix.
And we're going to have just a couple of toasted prawns. I have no paprika, it's the one thing
I forgot.
Woah! - Haha!
Sorry, that was my bad, I flinched.
And I was all like...
It's just like a Saturn V rocket isn't it? We've got the fuel there premixed with oxygen
so it's all ready to burn. And all the thrust is coming upside down, I guess it's like an...
upside down Saturn V. If you need to BBQ a prawn you've got to turn your rocket upside
down as the proverb goes.
And potentially send a prawn into space. - Yeah, OK.
is it warm at all? - It's warm-ish.
It's not crispy. I think we can do better.
I think what we need to do is almost strap the prawn down. Because at the moment your
upside down Saturn V is trying to blast the prawn off into space.
Now the gauze on top.
I don't know why people haven't done this before really.
This is surreal. - It's an interesting woosh rocket, isn't it?
Woah. - That might be it.
Look at the prawn shape on it. - Amazing.
Do you like isopropanoly prawns? - I'll give it a go.
Really? - Yeah.
Is it warm? - It's warm.
Yeah, it tastes a bit disgusting, I'll be honest with you. - Weird that.
Well that was pretty good. - That was amazing.
Overall I think we've done well. So we electrocuted a steak. That worked well.
That was tasty. We used the parabolic mirrors, we had the heatlamp going and that was tasty
as well. The prawn... you know... it was fun but I'm not going to say that's the best way
of cooking prawn I've ever seen in my life. So that was the extreme physics approach to
a BBQ. So yeah, if you want to check out the extreme chemistry approach then click on the
link, head over to BritLab and see how Greg and I got on over there.
It was a lot of fun. - It was a lot of fun.
And firey.
So yeah, that's about it, don't forget to subscribe. I hope you liked what you saw here
And see you next time.