Acetone, one of the world's most popular solvents.
Polystyrene, one of the world's most popular plastics.
What happens when they go toe to toe?
Find out tonight.
[Music]
Acetone is a common solvent.
Polystyrene is easily dissolved.
We want to see how much
and how fast we can dissolve this stuff in acetone.
Guys, in the past,
you watched us melt a Millennium Falcon,
which contaminated a lot of acetone.
We still have a lot of acetone left.
Like a lot of acetone left.
Here's the basic idea.
We've got lots of polystyrene.
We've got lots of acetone.
We're going to see
how much of the polystyrene can dissolve into that acetone,
and then try out some creative ways of combining the two.
Guys, acetone is a very popular solvent.
And in fact, it's a very popular nail polish remover
when it's diluted.
So you've probably seen how effective it is
when it takes off nail polish or even paint.
We want to show you
what it does when it melts down different types of polystyrene.
Usually, you refer to it as styrofoam.
Technically, styrofoam is a brand name of one type
of extruded polystyrene.
That's a closed cell type of foam.
It's used for insulation, building materials,
and a few other things like that.
It's become a pretty common term
to describe any extruded or expanded polystyrene.
These things happen.
Regardless of what it's called, we're going to melt some of it.
[Music]
If you have ever used nail polish remover before,
or even been around someone
who's used nail polish remover before,
you probably recognize the scent of acetone.
It's almost sweet,
but you can tell that there's definitely a chemical there.
And if you get a lot of it,
it's going to burn your sinuses and your nostrils quite a bit.
So be careful.
You only want to be using
this stuff somewhere with good ventilation.
So let's actually talk
about some of the safety precautions you want to take
if you're handling just straight acetone.
Technically, your body produces acetone in minute quantities.
We're talking about if a couple
of drops somehow accidentally ended up in your mouth,
it would be uncomfortable,
but it wouldn't kill you.
If you do accidentally swallow any, call Poison Control.
I bet it says that on it.
It says that on the container.
Basically, one entire side
of this canister is just a warning.
If it gets on your skin,
in most cases, it will just dry it out,
and it can cause some irritation,
and it'll make it extremely cold.
That's not because acetone itself is extremely cold.
That's the evaporation rate.
The faster something evaporates,
the colder your skin is going to get
if it's in contact with it.
If I dip my finger in there,
it cools it off because it evaporates so quickly.
It's even cooler than water.
Now, if it hits your eyes, you can have severe irritation.
Again, call Poison Control.
But skin, nails, it's going to dry them out.
But other than that,
there's not going to be a lot of harm done.
So we're standing in a well-ventilated area.
We're pretty covered, just as a precaution.
We're wearing nitrile gloves,
and nitrile actually is susceptible to
acetone's melting effects.
So if you were to leave this glove in there,
as you probably have seen in our Lego video,
they would just fall apart.
So short amount of time, you're fine,
but not for too long.
Something else to look at,
we are talking about how it evaporates quickly.
You can watch how fast this evaporates.
And it's gone.
That's actually really cool to watch.
We've got a little bit of this expanded polystyrene,
and let's use this as a first test.
We're just going to dip this in
for a second, and see what it does to the ends.
You can already hear it hissing,
and falling apart.
So that was dipped in there for like half a second,
and just immediately starts ruining it.
Dipping it at a bit of an angle,
so you can see more clearly where it has
and has not touched.
Enough of it was any acetone that time
that actually dripped down in,
and now, we have this gooey polystyrene liquid.
[Music]
That's what's left.
That whole brick
that I had has now just been dissolved
into this liquid white goop.
You can actually see that underneath the melted plastic,
Nate's gloves are also falling apart.
It just like loses its cohesion,
and is starting to like expand a little bit.
Whereas on this hand,
the gloves are fairly tight fitting.
On this hand, everywhere
that I've been putting in the acetone,
it's just loose and hanging off now.
All right, that was awesome.
But I think we need to scale that up a little bit.
[Music]
Normally, acetone is extremely clear.
This is acetone
that we did used to dissolve Lego in,
and they didn't get completely cloudy or destroyed,
but I think it's not quite as clear as new acetone would be.
This isn't our most contaminated batch,
but it is contaminated.
That's true.
Again, if you saw the Lego video
where we melted the Millennium Falcon in acetone,
the first time we tried it,
we had some off-brand Lego sheets with some different
formula of plastic,
and it just turned it like light blue.
And as far as I can tell, it's still like that.
It hasn't changed a bit.
What's next?
We should know more stuff.
So as we scale this up,
we're going to start dyeing some of our acetone different colors.
This one's going to be green,
mostly because this is really reminding me of the dip
from Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
He's never seen it.
Sorry.
[Music]
Wish this was shoe shaped.
He doesn't understand that reference.
But neither do a lot of you.
Ha!
I know a bunch of you weren't even born
when that movie came out.
I'm gonna melt some stuff now.
Really does look like it's dissolving in acid.
That's pretty great.
Well now I just feel sad.
But not enough to stop.
[Music]
I can actually watch it just,
as he's pushing it down, just it feeding up.
[Music]
We've now put some polystyrene into the acetone.
I'm curious what happens
if we apply the acetone to the polystyrene.
We've got a couple methods we want to try.
Coming up is the spray bottle.
Polystyrene, we're using expanded and extruded polystyrene.
There is also non-extruded polystyrene,
and that's usually in the form of a thin plastic,
many plastic cups.
If you have a white plastic cup,
there's a good chance that that is polystyrene.
You'll be able to tell by looking on the bottom,
and if inside,
a little triangle about recycling, it says PS,
that's for polystyrene.
Don't put acetone in one of those cups,
you'll dissolve it.
This is HPDE.
It does not dissolve in acetone.
Spray bottle full of purple acetone,
and some white expanded polystyrene.
See how this goes.
[Music]
Can definitely see the spray pattern of this bottle.
A new way to make cosplay armor,
or decorate anything out of foam.
This is awesome.
[Music]
We've seen great results with the expanded polystyrene.
This stuff is the extruded polystyrene.
It's not quite the same texture,
little more dense,
makes a more obnoxious sound with gloved hands on it.
You can stop that.
Yeah.
We can be done with that.
We're going to try moving on to our next application method,
the paint roller.
What I'm not so sure about though
is what this paint roller is made out of.
So this may work,
or it may just melt the moment it touches it.
We're going to find out.
[Music]
It's really not rolling very well anymore.
Spreading.
Wow.
Well, whatever this paint rollers made out of,
it is very resistant to this stuff.
Let's try an actual clean roll.
[Music]
This isn't a very good paint roller.
So the interesting thing is the acetones evaporated so fast
that this is almost solid again.
Like it's squishy,
but it's not sticking to my fingertips.
[Music]
Huh, it rolls little easier on this stuff.
The acetone is absolutely eating away at the expanded
polystyrene more so than the extruded polystyrene.
So that's kind of interesting.
I want to do a side-by-side.
[Music]
Okay, we are going to time
how long it takes to melt 8 feet of polystyrene.
Let's see which one goes faster,
and how long each one takes.
First, establish the rules.
We cannot push our pieces down.
We are simply here to steady them.
On your mark, get set, go.
Well, mine's just chasing yours.
I'm holding it as upright as this piece wants to go.
It's just sort of floating.
I mean, I knew yours is going to go much faster.
It's just--
Yours just has like a structural integrity.
[Music]
I didn't realize you had like a two point lead on me already.
[Music]
This was a fun game.
All right.
I am just past two and a half feet,
and yours is gone.
Very young.
[Music]
At this point,
your piece has actually started to change the color
of our dyed acetone.
Like it started out reddish,
now, it's kind of got a bit of a purple tone to it.
[Music]
That's what's happening.
That's what keeps it breaking off.
That's actually really cool shape.
And time.
Not gone yet.
Still going.
3 and 1/2 minutes versus...
11 minutes, 55 seconds.
So close.
We could still melt a whole lot of other stuff in there.
Shall we?
We shall.
[Music]
Guys, that's not all.
We've always got more for you to see.
That box up at the top is going to take you directly
to our last video.
You should go check that out.
The other boxes going to show you
what YouTube thinks you should be watching next.
And if you're not subscribed to the channel yet,
hit this bomb to get in the club.
So you never miss out on a cool video.
Don't forget to ring that bell,
and we will see you in the next one.
Talk to you then.