Today, we're going to see what happens
if we do all the things that a can of aerosol string
says not to do.
We're going to smash it, cut it, stab it,
and burn it.
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Guys, you're almost certainly familiar with aerosol string,
also and more commonly known as silly string,
or in these cases, Fiesta String and Goofy String.
There's lots of different brands of it,
but the idea is the same all around.
And there's a liquid in a can,
it's got an aerosol pressurizing it,
and then when you press down on the top...
It sprays out a string.
Cool stuff, huh?
My cameraman loved that.
Best shot!
Here's the basic idea.
We're going to destroy
cans of Silly String in a variety of ways,
and see what happens to 'em.
What's the most fun?
What's the most dangerous?
So what is inside one of these little cans?
Well, it's a combination of a few different things.
The main string itself is made up
of a type of polyacrylic resin,
which is just a fancy way of saying, it's a type of plastic
that's liquid in the can,
and then become solid as it dries out.
We're just going to do a test.
This is an orange one.
We're going to see how much Silly String we get
if we just spray it all in a pile right here.
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The total contents of one.
So this one is Goofy String brand.
This one actually came out in less of strings,
and is more of a blob,
and that's because I was spraying it down so tightly
that the string was piling up on itself,
and bunching up before I had time to dry off.
It dries off very quickly,
but it does dry off better if it has a couple
of feet to travel.
It really does just kind of smell like a bunch of solvents.
Since there are supposed
to be isopropyl alcohol and ammonia in there,
not too surprising.
It's wetter than you might expect, I think too.
Like there's a decent amount of liquid,
specially when you spray it in a pile like this,
and the liquid doesn't have as much time to evaporate.
Every version of aerosol string that I've ever used
has pretty much the same warnings on the back,
saying that it's under pressure,
and it could explode if it's exposed to heat,
or even too much sunlight,
and you shouldn't puncture the can,
or any of those things.
So we want to try all of those things.
I want to see what happens
if we just spray this through a fire.
The string is supposed to be pushed out by a repellent
that then evaporates very very quickly.
And so, if I were to try and light these things on fire,
I don't think much will happen.
However, if you're spraying directly through fire,
that's where it's supposed to get exciting,
and we're going to try it.
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That's not very exciting.
Let's try just one of these strings
that got a little bit more of a chance to dry out.
It's burning a little better.
But as soon as I take the heat away,
it just goes out.
So that didn't do a whole lot.
Let's see what happens
if we just shoot it right through a fire.
Seems like a good safe indoor activity, right?
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I think I see why they put the warnings on it.
That's kind of funny because it has the fire,
and then the fire goes out
by the time it hits the wall over there.
So I'm not lighting anything on fire.
I just have this two foot string
of fire in the middle of the air.
Let's do this again.
This is fun.
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So we can see there is a reason they put flammability warnings
on the cans.
It is flammable,
right as it's coming out of the can,
and it does carry that a little ways.
You don't want to spray this on a person
when there's any kind of flame or heat source around
because you could catch them on fire,
and that is almost certainly not what you should be doing.
So what's gonna happen
if we actually crack one of these cans open?
That's something I want to learn.
So, what's going to be the best way to do this?
We've got so many options.
We could use a saw,
we could use a drill, we could use a hammer,
we could use an axe.
Maybe you should try all of those.
All right.
Anyone have any bets on what they think is going to happen
when I drill a hole in?
I'm guessing a lot of propellants going to shoot out.
Possibly, the string liquid
turning into string will also shoot out.
I've got it clamped down pretty good,
so I'm not really worried about it going anywhere,
but we'll see.
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Okay, here we've got a blob of the string material.
I don't think this is as
much as a whole blob when I spread it out.
So that means, hopefully, there's still some in there,
and now, we're going to cut it open with a hacksaw, and see
if we can find it.
Oh, yeah.
There we go.
Okay, here's some of our Silly String material,
and this will already have started to change form.
There's no longer propellant in there holding it pressurized,
a lot of the solvents of started to change.
Looks like there's a nozzle.
So normally, this hose runs all the way down
to the bottom to help let all of our string fluid pour out.
I think now it's time to start
breaking open these cans a little more aggressively.
So, first up,
we're gonna try and chop it in half with an axe.
Here it goes.
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That was awesome.
So I didn't hit the can perfectly on the top,
kind of nicked it just on the edge there, I think.
Let's check out the slo-mo to see what it actually did.
Just going very slowly,
because that it's at a thousand times--
No, oh!
Coming down, coming down.
And...
Yeah, okay.
All right, for dispersal, that was probably about perfect.
I want to try it again though, and see if I can actually chop
a can right in the middle, and see what that does.
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Overshot the can again.
All right.
3, 2, 1.
Well...
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That was great.
It was very quick.
Even at a thousand frames per second,
it's just a quick pop,
and then flies everywhere, and it's gone.
It's just gone, but that looked really cool.
Now, we're going to try using this 12 pound Sledgehammer
to just smash right down through the top of one.
This is heavy enough
that I'm not sure how much I really need to swing it.
I mostly just trying to keep it on course.
3, 2, 1.
I mostly missed.
I've bent the can on that hit a little bit,
but it wasn't a straight enough hit to really
smash the can very much.
So, we're just gonna put this back,
and try and hit it again.
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I gotta keep smashing it.
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Well, I'm gonna say the axe was way cooler.
It actually tears the can open,
and I'm sure it's possible to do something like that
with a hammer,
but I am not a very good shot with this giant sledgehammer.
All right, new experiment.
We are going to see what happens if we freeze one of these.
We've got some liquid nitrogen.
We're going to put the can
in liquid nitrogen, and let it cool down, hopefully,
until the bubbles stopped.
That should mean everything is frozen all the way through.
We'll then take it out,
and we'll try drilling a hole in it the same way we did before.
We'll see if the pressure
has changed from cooling it down that much.
It's also possible that it'll get so cold
that it will just collapse in on itself.
For the most part,
we can let that sit for a few minutes.
While we're doing that,
I actually have another can that's been sitting
in a regular freezer for about two hours now,
and we can see
if that's made any progress toward freezing solid,
or at least having less pressure inside.
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A little bit of propellant seems to have sprayed out.
Let's see if we can hack saw this right open.
Well, look at that.
Here we go.
We have frozen slush--
You know what, let's try and pour all this out.
I suspect that some of this is actually are frozen propellant,
and some of it is just our goo.
It just sort of let this sit out
as it warms up, and see what happens to it.
I think we're just about there.
At this point,
most of the bubbling is from the tongs themselves,
which means this is probably very very cold.
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No propellant escaping at all.
The other frozen can had little bit,
but not much.
This one seems to have none.
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Wow!
That is solid.
We've seen a lot of good destruction
with these silly string cans.
We've seen the fire that comes out of them.
We puncture them,
cut them open, chopped them in half,
smash them with a hammer,
there's couple more things I do want to try though.
What happens if we throw it into fire?
That's one of the things we're going to do, and then,
how can we phrase this in a YouTube friendly way?
We want to use a projectile launching machine to launch
a projectile through as many of these cans as we can.
So then we're going to line up several of them,
and then very quickly launched a small lead copper
coated projectile through as many of the cans as possible.
Let's head up to the Dome.
Guys, we are now here at the Dome,
and we're going to see what happens if we do
what this is really telling us not to do,
and that's expose it to heat.
Not just any heat,
we're going to put it in front of a blowtorch,
and see what that does.
I'm thinking it's just going to explode,
and I hope it does.
So, here it goes.
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Oh, that was great!
That popped so nicely.
Oh, that was amazing.
Just POP!
Kind of went everywhere, about as expected,
about as hoped.
In the end,
it didn't really seem that dangerous.
Not that I'm saying this is a good safe idea to do,
because you should not.
But just popped.
Here's where our can ended up.
Literally all the way across the Dome.
You know what,
I think that didn't tear through the side.
That actually burst the bottom off of the can.
Pressure built up so much
that it just tore the bottom off,
and that explains
how we ended up getting a splat mark underneath it.
Completely empty inside,
the nozzles gone from the top.
Let's watch this on slo-mo.
Burned the label off a little bit.
Oh!
And come on.
Off like a rocket.
All right, we got more thing we want to try,
and that's what we were talking about before,
lining up a bunch of these cans,
and seeing if we
can launch a projectile through several of them,
and what they'll do.
All right.
Well, we've got our projectile launcher,
and a few projectiles,
and we're gonna see if we can launch projectiles
through several cans of our aerosol spray.
Here it goes.
3, 2.
Yeah.
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Whoo!
I love how some of the ones up front,
they didn't go anywhere.
They didn't move.
Shot clean through them.
All right, safety is on.
Yes.
Oh, that is beautiful.
Look at this.
Through one side, out the other.
And the can didn't go anywhere.
Projectile is moving so fast.
Look at this.
The green was so powerfully shot out,
it went through the blue can, and came out this side.
It's mixed in with the pink.
That is fun stuff.
So, until we got to here,
so you can kind of see that we're now going
a little off center.
We were doing pretty well getting to the pink one.
We have much larger holes going through here.
There's--
Oh, we took out the hose.
Going through, it's a little off-center here.
It's a lot more off-center.
But that time you get to the green, now,
at this point,
our projectile is probably deformed a little bit,
get to the green,
it's tearing open these giant holes in the sides.
Yellow, it seems to have re-centered a little bit.
The cans were not perfectly lined up.
So it's not going to be 100% the same every time.
That one's just torn right open, all the way across.
But that went through all of them.
That is excellent.
So... 1, 2, 3, 4,
5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14,
15 cans of aerosol string.
I could not have hoped for a better result.
That was so perfect.
So cool.
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