Hello there, I'm Gav.
Welcome to this Slow Mo Guys video.
This one is sponsored by Mio.
It's a water enhancer that when you squirt into a nice cup
of water, you get very visually appealing, colorful flume,
reminiscent of our ink in the water video
from a few years ago.
Today, we'll be taking inspiration from that
and recreating a classic science experiment.
Replacing the glass of water with this massive tank
and dropping molten thermite into it,
recording it obviously
at over a thousand frames a second in 4K.
The next thing I'm gonna do is get into some safety gear
and tell you not to try this at home.
I don't really know how you would though.
This here is our lovely pot of thermite.
Whenever I ask the question, how bright is thermite,
the answer seems to be, yes.
So what we're gonna do is a small test.
I'm gonna learn a lot about how bright it is,
what I should be exposing for.
Currently, I'm at F8 on a 90 degree shutter,
at 1,000 frames a second.
So let's see how bright this truly is.
Okay, as you can see, thermite is indeed very bright,
completely blown out at an F8.
So for this next shot, I exposed F16 to the point
where it looks like this was filmed at night,
even though it's a bright sunny day and only now,
am I seeing any information in those molten blobs.
What we're using here is the most common combination
of materials to make thermite,
and that is very finely ground up aluminium
and iron oxide, which is pretty much just rust powder.
We've learned a lot of good things from the test.
I'm happy with my exposure, ISO 320,
90 degree shutter, F 16,
unheard of F stop for me doing this.
The thermite will melt through this pot, go into the water,
the sand will hopefully stop it from melting
through the bottom of the tank.
This is a plastic tank that is slightly leaking,
so not sure how many gos we'll get from this tank.
This footage is actually slightly different
to footage of if you're just
pouring molten metal into water.
If you've ever seen that,
you'll notice that as the molten liquid descends,
it cools down, it becomes more red
and eventually sort of just stacks up
as solid metal on the bottom.
The thermite, the reaction continues all the way down.
It remains molten, even after it lands on the sand.
The reaction here isn't actually using any oxygen
from the surrounding air and it's not creating CO2
as a byproduct.
What we're doing, is transferring the oxygen
from the iron oxide to the aluminium,
and that is a massive exothermic reaction.
The two reaction products that we're left with,
which is just plain old iron and aluminium oxide,
end up over 2000 degrees celsius, hence the brightness.
Slightly different effect when it lands in water,
there's a lot of extra bubbles and gunk coming out
along with the thermite.
So in order to see a little bit more of that,
I'm just gonna expose for the sky.
So this will be very bright thermite,
but you'll be able to see everything around it.
So we know that this reaction is just a direct transfer
between the two materials involved,
and it's not creating any gases as a byproduct.
So the bubbles are actually just a result
of the insane temperatures immediately flashing
the surrounding water to steam,
and especially in this shot on the right,
you can see the insane amount of steam bubbles
being produced by the heat of the molten thermite.
The water itself doesn't actually quench the reaction,
so you kind of just have to wait it out.
And at the end, you're just left
with very brittle pieces of iron.
Well, I think we've got all the shots
that I wanted to see.
Some lovely looking footage.
However, slight problem, we do have 10 pounds
of thermite left over that I don't really want to take home,
so we just put it in a tin can,
and we're just gonna get rid of it all at once.
For reference, everything we've done so far
has been no bigger than three pounds.
You need quite a lot of heat to start
this thermite reaction, the little thing you're seeing
sticking out the side of the can there,
is a small magnesium strip.
It's honestly a lot going on here.
You can see that the thermite reaction has started,
but a lot of the powder has fallen under the water
and is now exploding back out like a volcano.
Interestingly, if I wind it back,
look at how quickly the side of this can becomes molten.
So the reaction has just started once all these sparks clear
out of the way, just around where it's being held in place,
it's already glowing.
So in real time, that is around a third of a second
that this can became liquid basically,
causing it just to give up and fall in.
Well, I think we've ended up with some wonderful,
artsy looking footage there, very satisfying to look at.
I could watch that for ages.
Now I'd love to tell you about the sponsor
of this video Mio, and as you listen to me,
please enjoy these lovely slow-mo clips
of me squeezing some Mio into some water.
Mio may be small, but it packs a mighty punch
with a cheeky little squeeze,
you can add some incredibly bold flavors to your water.
You can see me here blasting a few of them in,
and you'll be glad to know, every Mio flavor
is zero calories.
You do have to drink quite a lot of water every day
to stay properly hydrated,
so if you've grown bored of the flavorless taste of water,
Mio is pretty perfect for adding to each glass
and encouraging you to drink your full recommended amount
of water every day.
Very pretty colors, very satisfying to look at.
Big thanks to Mio for sponsoring this video.
If you want to get ahold of some yourself,
there's a link in the description,
and big thanks to you for watching this video.
Make sure you subscribe and we've got a second channel,
if you wish.
I'll see you next time.