Hey what's up guys! Welcome back.
So I went down to the dollar store the other day and I found one of these 12-packs of party poppers
for a dollar each. These things are kinda cool, when you pull the string they pop out a little bit of confetti. No big deal
But for this project, I thought it would be fun to take this idea and supersize it by making party poppers that are a lot more powerful.
Now if you ever wondered why a party popper pops when you pull the string, you are in luck because we are
going to cut these things open and show you the mechanism that sets these things off.
*party popper blast*
Now if you slowly and carefully use something like a pair of scissors to cut around the base of the plastic,
you can remove the top. You'll be left with the string and what looks like a little rolled up piece of paper on the end.
If we take that little rolled up piece of paper and just very slowly and carefully unroll it (I gotta do this without
blowing my fingertips off) eventually we are going to get to the center and if you look closely, you are going
to see there's a little red patch of powder right in the center of the string.
This little red dot may look small and harmless but this is Armstrong's mixture, which is a high explosive so
sensitive it can get set off by friction.
So as you pull the string through, the friction sets off the powder and causes the explosion.
*party popper bang*
So here's the basic idea: let's bring back the hydrogen generator we made in a previous video, pack one of
these water bottles full of confetti and use one of these small party poppers as the ignitor to set the whole thing off.
We're also going to want our party poppers to be a little more powerful
than one of these lame little explosions.
So for that I went down to the local Supercenter
and picked up some of these multi-colored pieces of construction paper
as well as a roll of fire-resistant party streamers.
Now I had kind of a hard time finding actual confetti at the store,
but if take a bunch of construction paper like this
and use a multi-hole punch like this,
we can make our own colored dots in just a few seconds.
So a couple of minutes later, we have ourselves
handfuls upon handfuls of these little, colored dots.
This is gonna be fun.
Now over here, we need to turn our water bottles into something I like to call confetti cartridges
and that's easily done by taking a few handfuls of these colored dots,
shoving them down into the bottom of our bottle, and then covering everything
with a couple of layers of our fire-resistant party streamers
to hold everything in place
...and make a really big mess as I do.
Wow, I'm terrible.
The idea being, if we did it right,
we should be able to turn this thing upside down and our colored dots will stay in place.
Now to make these things pull-string poppers,
we need to just slightly modify our water bottle lids
and for that, I'm using a toothpick.
All you need to do is poke a small hole through the center of the cap
then bite one end off the toothpick and use the blunt surface
to push the string from your party popper down through the inside of the cap.
Now hydrogen is an extremely light gas
and even that small hole at the top will be enough
to let that gas rise up and escape over time.
So let's just use a little bit of this tacky clay to plug that hole,
which will give us slightly longer a shelf life for using our hydrogen bottles.
So let's talk about the hydrogen generator for a second.
This thing actually splits water into two molecules:
hydrogen and oxygen, and both of those gases combine
to make a highly explosive mixture.
All we have to do is fill this thing up with distilled water,
add a little potassium hydroxide as an electrolyte,
and then hook it up to a car battery to get cranking out our gas.
*sings* Two scoops of potassium hydroxide
and we're cool to run our generator.
Cool. That starts bubbling immediately.
*ignites*
So right now these bubbles are kind of weak,
and that's because the system is pushing out all of the air that's trapped inside,
but as all the air is pushed out of the system and the hydroxy gas replaces it,
these bubbles will snap with a bang loud enough to hurt your ears
and that's when they're ready.
*ignites*
Alright, I think our system's good.
Now charging our confetti cartridges with hydroxy gas
is actually a lot easier than you might think.
Just take the output end of your hydroxy generator,
stick it inside the bottle, and hold it upside down for about one minute.
As the hydrogen and oxygen rise, they're going to displace all the air out of the bottle
until only the hydroxy gas is left.
At that point, just screw the lid back on and your confetti cartridge is ready for action.
Update, guys! I've got my wife with me
to test out our very first cartridge here.
And these things are a lot louder than you might think,
so I brought a couple of earplugs for her to put in
and I'm going to give you a thick glove,
because as you pull the string I don't want any shrapnel coming back into your hand either.
These things are powerful, guys.
Now this thing should be just about ready, so let's go ahead and screw the cap back on
Now all you're going to do is hold this in one hand
and when you're ready, pull the string and let's see what happens.
*bangs*
*laughter*
It worked!
[Janae: Oh wow!]
So check out this damage, guys
we've got a little bit of a exit wound near the neck of the bottle
but look at the top!
I mean, it just shredded that completely.
That worked perfectly, and we got confetti all over the room,
that was awesome.
Apparently we have some spider webs in the basement here, because you can actually see
confetti stuck to the spider webs!
[Oh, apparently, uh, that wasn't clean!]
Hey did you guys see that when it exploded there was
actually like a huge fireball I saw blast at my face
and then all the confetti went this way?
It smells kind of like sulfur, it smells kind of like gunpowder just went off.
I think that was just from the actual pull string
party popper itself, the hydrogen doesn't make that smell.
But you can see how much more powerful these things are now
with the hydroxy gas in the bottles, right?
[Oh yeah, that's gonna make for a really amazing party favor right there!]
Oh, and, uh, how was it having the earplugs in?
How much of a difference do you think that made to the effect?
[It was still extremely loud.]
Yeah, I had my ears plugged and I could still hear quite a bit as well.
If you don't have your ears plugged, your ears will sting,
they will ring. It hurts quite a bit.
[Yeah, if I didn't have those earplugs in, they would be ringing now for sure.]
You wanna try another one?
[No!] *laughs*
Okay, how about I do it this time? [Okay, I'll watch.]
Okay, so I'll do it this time.
Alright, so our second bottle is charged,
and this time I'm gonna set it off.
Gloves on for safety.
And I think I'm just going to shoot it straight up at the ceiling this time
just to see if we can see the confetti go up and rain back down.
So, I'm gonna get a little bit risky and stand a little bit closer than I should
and if all goes well...
(Why don't you get a little bit closer, you ready?)
Here we go, moment of truth.
*bangs* [Woo!]
Wow!
Dang!
Check this out, it exploded right in my hand, like right in the neck of the bottle,
my fingers are tingling from the shock wave.
It's a really good thing I was wearing gloves there.
And look at that, it just burst out the side.
Amazingly, like none of the confetti came out.
[We can reuse all that confetti.]
There's like this little hole in the top. I think we're going to have to do that again.
[I think the baby can hear those explosions.]
Oh really? *laughs* [Yeah!] You think he jumped?
Now how did you get your bottle to explode, but mine busted at the neck?
[I think I was holding it at an angle.]
You think the angle makes a difference?
[For whatever reason, I think that that helped the blast go up and out rather than straight up...]
Okay. So let's go ahead and screw on our last blast cap here.
*bangs*
Dang! It was amazing!
I, like, felt the kick-back on my hand
and then it just all went out the top.
Woah, come look at this, come look at this!
It all blasted out the top, like it just shredded it
and pushed everything out. That was perfect.
There's no damage down here by the neck, but I actually felt that kick back and hit my fingers.
Even with this big thick glove on, it hit my fingers to the point where
they're a little bit numb. They're stinging.
But that blast couldn't have worked out more perfectly. That was AMAZING!
King of Random party poppers, guys. How about that?
So, cool. So, yeah.
Thoughts on that, Janae?
[I think that was awesome.]
So there you have it, guys! That's how to turn your ordinary dollar store party poppers
into party poppers, King of Random style.
They pack a little bit more of a punch, and are quite a bit louder as well.
Hey guys, thanks for joining us for this video,
we'll be looking for you in the next one. Talk to you then!
Too dangerous to do at your house,
so go do them at someone else's house instead.
*laughter*
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