(high intensity music)
- [Man] Well, it looks like our little friend
didn't survive his journey into a pit full of acetone,
which really isn't that surprising.
Acetone is a nifty liquid you'll commonly find
as the active ingredient in nail polish remover.
The cool thing is that it's also a solvent
for certain types of plastic.
In fact, professional Lego builders use it
to bond bricks together, making it extremely difficult
to break the pieces apart without serious force.
So it can literally melt various plastics
before your very eyes.
This, of course, includes styrofoam,
which happens to be my favorite, so let's start there.
I put about half an inch of acetone into a glass container.
This will be enough to take care of some tests
that I wanna do with styrofoam.
Now, the quickest and most intense
reaction you'll find is with packing peanuts.
Just toss them in and watch as they fade
and melt down into a gooey state.
So, if you have some nail polish remover
and a package laying around,
you can try this in a very well ventilated area.
For you younger ones, just make sure
there's an adult present and do it outdoors.
The result is pretty satisfying and fun
to watch over and over and over again,
but what about a larger block of styrofoam?
I broke apart the styrofoam shipping materials
from my television box to see how easily it would dissolve.
As long as there's still more liquid
in the container than melty goo,
you can keep using it until it fills up.
The acetone makes quick work of these little bricks
and gives an impressive little show to curious eyes.
But what about a five foot long piece of styrofoam?
Well, we'll try that a little bit later.
For now, let's see what happens to a Rubik's cube.
I filled a small glass cylinder with acetone
and carefully placed the Rubik's cube inside.
Since this is a much more dense type of plastic,
the results won't be so instantaneous.
In fact, what you're watching now
is 12 hours of time-lapse video.
The Rubik's cube held its form
for most of the time it was in there.
It just appeared to slowly become bloated and soggy.
After it stopped changing shape,
I pressed a skewer into the top
and found that the entire thing
had turned into a mush of goo.
I doubt anyone could solve this cube in just 12 seconds.
Of course, Lego bricks had to be tested as well.
We already knew that they would melt down,
but how long would it take to dissolve
several pieces at once?
The answer was about five hours.
After dropping in some random pieces,
the stop motion camera was set up
and ready to film the process.
You can see it reacted in a similar fashion
to the Rubik's cube.
The pieces start to sag and bloat,
eventually coming to a standstill
unless the liquid is disturbed.
So with a quick shake of the cylinder,
the pieces broke apart instantly,
forming a little pile of Lego rubble.
If you wanted to re-mold the plastic into something else,
you could let it break down even further,
and then pour the remnants into a shape of your choosing.
All right, it's time to quell that longing for satisfaction
with a five foot piece of styrofoam.
I didn't need to add that much acetone to accomplish this,
but it did take about three minutes
to dissolve the entire piece while applying pressure.
You can see the progress slows a bit
whenever I hit a thicker portion of the piece,
but with a little wiggling, it keeps going with no problems.
Now you might be wondering what to do
with all the leftover goo.
As I mentioned before, you can pour it into a mold
and let it dry out to form your own hard plastics.
Alternatively, you can let the container sit out
until the acetone evaporates, which
shouldn't take very long, maybe just a few hours,
and then, throw the dried plastic away in the trash.
Whatever suits you is fine.
I also wanted to try dissolving a candle.
I took a tea light and dropped it in.
It sat for about two hours with no changes,
so ultimately, I gave up.
I figured the wax was too dense to take down
a fully formed candle, but what about wax drippings?
Perhaps if a candle spilled on the floor,
leaving a waxy mess.
By putting just a little bit of acetone
on a paper towel and rubbing the spot, it came right off.
So keep this in mind if you ever
get it on the carpet or on your wooden floors.
The last thing I wanted to test was
if just a little bit of acetone
could find its way through multiple layers of styrofoam.
Using a pipette dropper, I sucked up
a bit of liquid, and dropped it right on top.
The acetone tore right through,
and made its way to the bottom.
So in the odd and unlikely scenario
that you have a floor made entirely of styrofoam,
it's probably best to avoid bringing acetone anywhere near it.
Thanks for taking this little scientific journey with me.
If you enjoyed this, we have an entire series
called Scientific Tuesdays that you can check out
by clicking this playlist.
You can also check out our great
playlist of life-hack videos.
Click either one and you're sure
to have yourself a good, grand old time.
Thanks for watching.
Be sure you subscribe for more videos,
and we'll see you next time.