(thum)
- Welcome back to What's Inside.
Today, we are on a road trip,
and we're gonna cut open a meteorite.
- Isn't it beautiful, behind us?
We decided to stop, we've been driving for,
like, five hours already.
But we're on our way to this
giant crater near Flagstaff, Arizona.
We bought this one on the internet
and it's originally from Argentina.
But about nine hours away from our house
is a giant hole in the ground
from where meteorites hit thousands of years ago
so we want to see it for ourselves.
So we stopped at this place
with these giant rocks everywhere,
and I was reading some emails in the car
for a few minutes, and I'm like, where'd the kids go?
And I opened up the door, and they're like, "Dad!"
Check this out, (laughs).
Can you see them up there?
Where are they (laughs), there they are.
They are way up there.
All right, that guy right there is the real size
of an astronaut next to the flag and now I'm gonna
zoom out so you can see how big this thing really is.
(rhythmic percussion music)
That is how big it is.
Whoa, there it is, let the sky in!
(laughs)
This thing is huge.
What do you think about this place?
- See that rock far out there, that huge one?
- [Voiceover] Yeah.
- That's the size of a house.
- We were gonna fly the drone up here,
but there is no way it could have happened
with this wind.
- Yeah, it's gonna go and crash into the crater
and we're gonna get in major trouble.
- Isn't it amazing one of these could make one of those?
We were walking in, and we found this meteorite.
And then we compared it to our meteorite.
That we paid $500 for.
Look how tiny.
This is part of a 150-foot meteor that fell here
in Winslow, Arizona about 50,000 years ago, they estimate,
and the hole is gigantic,
it's 500-feet deep and 4,000-feet wide.
This should be the last time
we're filling up with gas on this trip.
19 hours in the car so we can stop at a crater
for an hour and a half (laughs).
So this has been a great trip and now
it's time to go cut this meteorite in half,
and then we have to go to a separate science lab
and put nitric acid on the thing and see
if we can get some cool patterns
that would come out of it.
We sat in the car for 19 hours, how does it link in?
- It was fun, because we listened to Harry Potter.
- That's right, so we downloaded,
from audible.com we went on there, and we got
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by JK Rowling,
and the reason why we got this is because
it is eight hours and 33 minutes long.
- Perfect, 'cause that's how much we've been driving.
- For one whole leg of the drive, we were able to listen
to Harry Potter, and it made the drive seem
like it went by so much faster,
so we love audible.com.
In fact, reached out to them and they decided
that they would this video,
and hook you guys up, and hook us up
with our own link, so show them some love, go to
audible.com/whatsinside,
you can get the Harry Potter for free, or
any of the 180,000 titles for free for 30 days.
Rockpick Legends!
We're here with our friend, Rick, and he is an expert
at cutting rocks, a lot of people might be wondering
why are we cutting open a meteorite.
- We're gonna cut open a meteorite so that
we can etch it out and find the Widmanstatten lines,
the hatch patterns that form inside the meteorites,
but you have to cut them and then
you have to etch it with acid.
- [Voiceover] Okay, so we're gonna etch it
with acid after this, that sounds very dangerous.
We just saw the blade and that you can actually
put your finger on there, and it doesn't cut it,
but yet it will cut a meteorite.
- That's kind of crazy.
(jazzy music)
- [Voiceover] Look at that.
- That's cool. - [Voiceover] How shiny it is.
- [Rick] That's pretty hot, isn't it?
All right, and this is the diamond wet polisher,
it's designed for polishing rocks, you go with a
very coarse grade and go to a super fine grade.
The only way it would it would mess that line
so it wouldn't show up is if we polish off all of these
scratch marks from cutting it.
- [Voiceover] Here it is before, and up close.
(machine whining)
Rick, great job.
Check it out, they're polished.
There's the inside of the meteorite.
Now we need to take it and put the nitric acid on it
and see if it'll etch.
We often get a lot of comments saying,
you guys are not safe, where's your PPE
well check this out, glasses,
fancy gloves, a jacket.
Even though we have a youtube channel,
it's not significant enough to be able to purchase
nitric acid off the internet.
Odd right? - [Lincoln] Yeah.
- So we got our friend Avin from GTI
and he is a science teacher here.
Today when we were with Rick, at the rock store,
he told us that some meteorites
within five minutes, you'll see these great patterns
that come out, and then other meteorites,
you may not see anything,
so this might be as good as it gets.
And the sad thing is, once you put in the nitric acid,
the shine goes away.
- [Avin] And away it goes, thumbnails.
Now it goes In there, and now,
we have a 10% solution.
- [Voiceover] Lincoln, how do you
feel about this whole thing? - [Lincoln] Scared.
- [Voiceover] Okay, so we just cleaned it off.
We're putting it in the acid, getting really close,
if it explodes, you'll have a close-up view of it.
It's kind of, looks like kind of green.
- [Avin] It's starting to turn a little yellow-greenish.
The greenish comes from the nickel oxide,
so it's etching some of the nickel out.
Then it should also be etching some of the iron out,
and that's gonna be rust, that's gonna be iron oxide.
- Science.
- [Lincoln] Yeah, there's something.
- [Voiceover] I don't really see any patterns in there yet.
Just kind of looks black.
That tells me something is happening.
I know what's happening, the aliens are coming out
of the meteorite, they've been in there for 5,000 years.
What's finally coming out, what do you think?
- Probably.
- Good dad joke?
- Probably, we have to swipe it,
and then a genie's gonna come out.
- [Voiceover] Yeah, how does it look?
Oh it's looking better now. - [Lincoln] Yeah.
- [Voiceover] Yeah.
- [Lincoln] It's looking much better.
- [Voiceover] Okay, put it back in.
- [Lincoln] Still a bit of black on the sides.
- [Voiceover] Okay, that was promising.
I was a little worried at the beginning.
- [Both] Yeah, it was totally black.
- [Voiceover] But then Avin, our scientist,
he was smart enough, he's like,
let's just put some more nitric acid in it.
So he put some more nitric acid in it,
made the concentration a little higher,
and now it's actually etching it.
- [Lincoln] Woo hoo!
That's looking weird.
So how much nitric acid do you have to have
to blow something up?
- I don't feel comfortable answering that.
But, this is what you use to make TNT.
- [Voiceover] So take a look at that,
you can see some of the patterns,
the Widmanstatten pattern, I guess.
Here is the one that's been etched in the nitric acid.
Here's the one that wasn't.
And yes, it's not as shiny, but you can also see
these different patterns that kind of come out of it.
This was an awesome project.
We also want to remind you guys
to look at the description below and use the link
that they gave us to hook you guys up
with a free audio book, or 30 days for free,
that's audible.com/whatsinside.
- [Voiceover] Who's is this?
- [Voiceover] That is mine, it's a meteorite.
- No kidding.
- [Voiceover] Yeah.
- So, how did you obtain that?
- [Voiceover] Bought it off of ebay for $500.
- Really?
- [Voiceover] I'm gonna cut it open for a youtube video.
- Is that right? - [Voiceover] Yeah.
It makes cool patterns inside when you cut it open.
- I did not know that.
- [Voiceover] Cool, right?
- Wow.