["Cartoon Space Utopia" intro music]
All right everyone welcome back to Cody'sLab. So, I have here a chunk of aluminum. See, angle 'luminum
It's about three nano light seconds long
But of course, I'm only gonna be using a small piece of it because today I want to actually destroy it using a liquid metal.
You might have seen mercury destroying 'luminum or gallium destroying 'luminum
What I've not seen is an alloy, which is liquid at a higher temperature
also doing it and I think it should as long as the metal can dissolve the 'luminum then it should
catalytically destroy it as mercury will
So I'm gonna try this out with some field metal. This is an alloyed mixture of
32.5 and a half percent bismuth 16.5 and a half percent tin and 51% indium
Okay, so that should be our alloy constituents and I gotta find a spoon or something to melt it down in
It of course takes a much higher temperature to melt it down right now because all the metals are separate
and they don't actually
lower each other's melting point until they're actually mixed. But as soon as they do start mixing you see they know quite quickly
Come on. There it is.
We have a liquid
What I like about this alloy is it's all non-toxic materials
You know bismuth indium and tin none of those are very toxic
There's a pretty bit of metal
See sticks to things. In fact, this could be used to make a mirror I think
That's what that burn was there, -chuckles- well that's cooling let's cut off a piece of this 'luminum
I really need to bolt down my vise -laughs-
There is one problem with this metal
Takes forever to solidify
So I've got some water here that I've warmed to about 80 degrees centigrade
So now let's drop in the metal and see if it melts, it should
It's meltin'
Good
as you can see we've moved over to the hot plate and
Right now I'm just kind of scratching the aluminum to get rid of that oxide coating
If you've ever tried to react 'luminum with another metal, you'll know that it's not exactly trivial
'luminum forms an oxide coating which is rather difficult to get through
That, uh, that should help but of course the coating forms almost immediately
Oops, I just rolled right off there. Maybe I should drill a divot into it
Okay, it's very similar to working with mercury just a little higher temperature
Notice I'm scratching at it
Underneath of the metal so the oxygen can't get to it
Okay
See, there's a little bit of oxide forming already. I'm not sure if that's from the tin and indium or if it's from the 'luminum
This is what it currently looks like
So this is just after putting the bit of metal on there and then stirring it around
So it made good contact with the 'luminum
And now I'm gonna check on it maybe every half an hour or so
Okay, 4:00 a.m
And look at this
Looks more or less the same except there is a little bit of like a gray around it. So it is affecting the 'luminum
At 4:30
I can't really tell... I think that dark spot is increased in size
Okay
it has definitely altered the--
piece of 'luminum. Let's see what happens if I--
tried bending it
See if it's made it brittle yet
Okay, the metal appears to be still quite strong. Let's tip it over a little bit
Let's see what it's done to the actual metal. Doesn't appear to have eaten a creator into it or anything
Okay, so a bit of time has elapsed
You can see the 'luminum has changed substantially though
now this was weird because
Most of this change happened after I turned to the hot plate off you see at about 8 a.m
I had to leave and I didn't want to leave the hot plate running
so I just turned it off let everything cool and when I came back I came back to this so
the metal has--
obviously oxidized--
substantially, so the--
fields metal is soaked through the 'luminum and--
disrupted the oxide coating in this area and then the air was able to attack it
so if you flip it over and see it hasn't gone through all the way but it has gone to the edges here
There's a couple of spots
So it seems to soak through laterally more than vertically. Yeah, the the 'luminum is still quite strong
That makes sense because it hasn't destroyed or interacted with the majority of it
But this is proof that the fields metal will attack 'luminum
So let's turn the hot plate back on
Let's let it sit on here for a few more hours with the metal liquid and see if it soaks through even more
Okay, just after 5:30
so you can see that there is a little bit of a gray a
different colored silvery gray outline around this dark
Grey mark, the 'luminum isn't being oxidized substantially
It's not until I cool it off that it starts to really destroy it
So maybe doing a thermal cycle would be more effective
So let's actually turn the hot plate off
Let's let it cool down again and see if that works
See we kind of mark it or the outline of that
Area is and then where this currently is
But if anyone has any idea why it causes the 'luminum to really fall apart
When when it's cooling off, please let me know
And here we are it is... just after 7:00
And it has indeed... marched along with the--
destruction of the 'luminum I'm looking over this edge here. That's kind of interesting
Let me zoom in on that. Yeah, look at that. It's like it's crawled off the edge there. That's pretty cool. And of course
It is now hard
So, yeah, it does seem like it's thermocycling it really does have an effect
Look around on the backside here
Looks like these areas are a little bit larger than last time a little bit on this corner here
That makes me think that maybe we finally weakened it
Yeah, certainly not like that well, let's heat it up and lift the metal melt again, let's give it another cycle
It's almost eight
Here's the metal it's all warmed back up
Let's see if I can break it in half
It's still a little bit hard to crack but look at that I just pulled it right apart!
I probably couldn't have done it just with my fingers--
especially since it's so hot, but that was definitely substantially weaker.
I like how it like...
had a juicy center almost
So this gray scale on the 'luminum is not superficial like it goes pretty deep into it
the metal just completely crumbles.
So one last quick little experiment here. Let's put some of this into some warm water
Ahh, It's reacting
Okay, so it's the extra sensitive to moisture
Might explain some things
It's actually decomposing the 'luminum and 'luminum oxide and hydrogen gas
Let's put some soap in the water so we can capture those bubbles. Let's see if they can be ignited
Let's throw this other piece in there too
Yeah, we got it going
Turn off the lights now
Let's hit this with the torch and see if we get it some hydrogen burning
Huh
That's a way to get hydrogen out of water shields metal plus 'luminum
So, I hope you all enjoyed and I'll see you next time
["Cartoon Space Utopia" outro music]