Welcome back guys, and thank you for joining us here today on the king of random. A little while ago,
I saw a video of something that seemed impossible
Lighting a fire using water. It's an experiment that I want to try and replicate here today
And find a recipe that will work every time. I did a little bit of research and found that this chemical mixture is something
that's called Negative X. Although I couldn't find anything that explained
why it was called that.
So if you have a source that tells me where the name came from please let me know down in the comments
I found a recipe for this mixture
That uses only three ingredients before you add the water ammonium nitrate, ammonium chloride, and zinc powder. So first
I'll talk a little bit about what each of these ingredients are and where you can get them
And then we'll see if we can make fire from water. Ammonium nitrate is a nitrate salt
That's frequently used as a type of fertilizer and when it mixes with water it produces an endothermic reaction
Endothermic means that it gets really cold and that actually has to do with where we can get ammonium nitrate you can buy these
Instant cold packs that are full of a bag of water and ammonium nitrate beads
There are a few different types of these cold packs
So make sure you check on the box to see that it says that it contains ammonium nitrate
I got these ones at Target in the ammonium nitrate
And it works really well for this experiment. The next ingredient is ammonium chloride which is an inorganic compound fairly similar to table salt
It's often sold in blocks like this with a primary use of cleaning the tips of soldering irons. In a few countries like the Netherlands,
You can also find it in a powdered form on the outside of black licorice
Candy. The box this came in has a warning on it that says to make sure you don't ingest any of it
But because it is used as a food in some places. I'm gonna lick it and see what it's like
All right, so this stuff is weird it feels like licking salt and a 9-volt battery at the same time
I don't know exactly what the chemical reaction happening is but it really like buzzes and fizzes on your tongue a little bit
It's very strange
I've never had a food product do that before and in case any of you were worried I did look up the safety specs for
This stuff and I would have to eat a fair amount of this block before I really had to be worried about my health
The last ingredient we need today is zinc and zinc is a fairly common metal
But we need it in a very pure form and unless you have just the right equipment
We need to buy it to get it in this very fine powder. Now we know our three ingredients
Let's try mixing them together to see if we can start a fire using water. To start
We'll measure off six grams of the ammonium nitrate next we'll scrape off one gram of our ammonium chloride from the block
Before we add our zinc we want to grind our first two ingredients together into a fine powder
In a separate container or on a piece of paper measure out 14 grams of the zinc powder
Now we haven't mixed the two together yet because as soon as they are combined you have something that's incendiary
Meaning it can catch fire very easily, and we don't want to do that while we're indoors
Apparently you're not even supposed to mix this stuff up if it's raining outside or particularly
humid because it can catch fire just from that so we're gonna take our ingredients outside carefully mix them together and then see if we
Can light them on fire just using water
We're going to mix the ingredients
Using what's called the diaper method. Pour all of your powdered ingredients onto a piece of paper and then lift the corners to gently mix
them together
These larger lighter colored bits of the ammonium nitrate that probably weren't ground-up quite enough
We'll see if it will still work even though
I didn't grind it into quite as fine as a powder as I should have. All right
I've got our negative X mixture sitting on this piece of foil to protect the ground underneath it
I'm gonna spray with a little bit of water and then back off because when this burns it releases
Zinc fumes which are not good for you
Here goes nothing
There we go now it's starting I don't know why it took that long
Wow look at that flame that is such a cool bright green blue color
Okay look off to the side, you can actually see it's spitting little bits of burning zinc
That was faster
Well
Okay, so I had a bunch of the negative x mixed up getting ready to burn it in separate little piles
But remember my warning about how you're not supposed to mix it up on a humid day
Today is a little bit humid
There's clouds in the sky and apparently that was enough to set it off. The bowl that it was in was
Completely dry, no water got sprayed on it whatsoever and hit ignited it
Just burst into flames, and it actually completely destroyed the my mixing bowl as well. You can probably see right here
There's just shards of glass the extreme heat from that just demolished it so gonna have to get a new one of those
But that worked really well
So this is what is left over from this mixture if you've seen it on the other pieces of foil as well
This is zinc oxide
And then of course, little bits of shattered glass
Everywhere because that's why you don't mix it up until right before you're ready to use it
So I am extremely glad that it took a small precaution while it was just sitting in that bowl
It was originally sitting right next to my phone on the ground and I didn't think it was gonna light on fire
But I thought just in case because in theory this stuff can just sort of spontaneously
combust, I moved it out of the way and kind of behind this pole, so there would be a layer of protection and
Then it lit on fire, and I'm happy to report that my phone was not damaged
I managed to pull it out of the way even though it was about a foot away. It does sort of send little
sparks of molten zinc through the air. Alright guys
I've mixed up another batch, and I'm about to start gently mixing it in this plastic bag
And I'm gonna pour it out onto the foil, but it has actually started to rain a little bit
Maybe I didn't choose the best day to do this
Experiment so what I think is gonna happen is I'm gonna start pouring this powder out
And it's just gonna start lighting on fire after a couple seconds because there's even water on the foil already
So let's just watch what happens
Alright, I've poured it out. So far It doesn't look like anything is lit on fire
It's not raining very heavily
So it might be that there isn't enough for it to start quickly if it doesn't start in the next few seconds
I'm just gonna grab the spray bottle and get it going
Unbelievable, I'm giving it some help
Doesn't light as well if it's not in a pile new plan. I'm just gonna pile it up instead of leaving it in a snake
Try not to breathe. Just cooling it down a little bit
Okay guys, I'm gonna call that a success despite a few hiccups here
and there
we got the negative X to light on fire using just water. At first it took a little bit longer than I expected so I
Mixed up a new batch being sure to grind it into a much finer powder
While we were doing our second test, the bowl with the rest of our batch bursts into flames
I don't know if it was too humid outside, or if a stray raindrop hit it
Or if the natural chemical process that takes place in this reaction just started on its own which can happen. To understand
What was going on let's talk a little bit about the chemistry behind this reaction. When the water interacts with the ammonium chloride
It lets the chloride act as a catalyst on the ammonium nitrate. The ammonium nitrate breaks up into nitrous oxide and water
The water continues to react with more ammonium nitrate spreading the reaction. At the same time the nitrous oxide begins reacting with the zinc
Forming zinc oxide and that puts off a zinc oxide and nitrogen gas
So then the whole thing puts out a whole lot of heat, lights on fire, and what you're left with is zinc oxide,
Nitrogen gas, and water in the form of steam. You can see the residue left over
This is mostly zinc oxide. Of course the nitrogen gas and the water in the form of steam
dissipated into the air.
A word again about the safety of this stuff as I think you've seen it can be pretty dangerous
It takes just a little bit of water and only a couple seconds to light on fire or in the case of what I had
In the mixing bowl it takes
I don't even know maybe just humidity in the air
And there was enough of it in one spot that it just ignited
And it broke my mixing bowl because it was so hot so fast
So be very careful with this stuff
You cannot store it even if you have a clean dry jar
Eventually the ammonium chloride will start to react with the ammonium nitrate
So never make this until you're ready to use it. Also,
Be aware that the zinc fumes are toxic so you want to be upwind from your mixture
Thank you so much for joining me in this video. I look forward to the next one talk to you then
Also, you should lick this stuff. It's wierd
Look at that that's your zinc oxide right there, this turns to dust there's also a little bit of wind
Here goes nothing
Oh come on
You right there. The one who just watched this video to the end
You are the reason that we work so hard to make these videos. It's for people like you
Thank you very kindly for being as supportive as you. You keep watching the videos? We'll keep making more