In today's video,
we are going to be showing you some experiments using gallium,
aluminum, and acid.
[Music]
We've done some fun experiments with gallium in the past,
including making some little Lego men,
full gallium copy of my face,
and we've just melted it down, and played with it.
Today, we want to look at a little bit more of some
of the chemistry behind gallium,
and how it reacts with some other stuff.
Here's the basic idea.
We are going to be taking our gallium,
and we are going to be putting it through a few basic tests
to show you just how different it is.
So gallium is the element 31,
and it's actually in the same family of some metals
that you may be familiar with, like aluminum,
but there are some vast differences.
We want to show you what some of those are.
Most famously, gallium has a melting temperature
that is way lower than aluminum,
and lower than almost any other metal.
This cast of my face is probably about 60%
of all of the gallium we have,
maybe more, and we need it for some experiments.
So this, unfortunately, is now going to get destroyed.
[Music]
My face is now melted.
So we've got plenty of liquid gallium to play with.
Let's see what we can do with it.
Gallium melts to a liquid
at about 85 and 1/2 degrees Fahrenheit,
which is about 29 and 1/2 degrees Celsius.
This gallium,
which was on the stove,
even though it was on its lowest setting is
quite a bit warmer than that,
hot enough that it's a little bit uncomfortable
to stick our hands in for any extended period of time,
but we can still do it for just a second,
and you can see how it reacts and moves.
So some people think
that gallium is toxic or not safe to handle,
that's simply not true.
Mercury, which looks very similar is,
but gallium, as far as we know,
it's just fine.
And when she says we,
she doesn't mean we didn't do any research.
We as in all tests indicate that metallic gallium is safe.
One note, although it's
not toxic, it does have a tendency to stain a little bit,
like it just leaves some residue.
Well, we don't feel
like we need to be wearing gloves for safety reasons.
We do like wearing gloves for staining reasons.
This should come out with just soap and water though.
Soda cans are made from aluminum,
and aluminum reacts interestingly with gallium.
We're going to do an experiment to show that effect.
So the aluminum can has like paint,
and it has a coating on it
so that your drink is absorbing aluminum as you drinking it.
So what we're going to do is we're going to sand the bottom
of this can a little bit,
we're going to pour some of our molten gallium into a bowl,
and we're going to set the can in there,
and we're going to let it sit for a while,
and see what it does.
Aluminum usually has an oxide layer on it,
even when it's not painted.
Now, that actually keeps it from reacting with water
and other things,
but it's also going to keep it from reacting to the gallium.
So not just the paint,
but the oxide layer itself has to come off,
and then you'll actually see
how quickly it will soak that up.
Perfect.
We're going to place that on the stove,
in the spot that keeps it warm,
and just let it sit and absorb.
This right here is some aluminum mesh.
Useful for a lot of things, but right now,
we're just going to use it because...
>> It's aluminum. >> It's aluminum.
Regular sheet of aluminum foil.
You can tear it.
It tears fairly easily,
but it also doesn't just fall apart.
Nothing's happened to it.
However, take a little bit of the gallium.
We got a little bead out there.
I'm just going to spread that around on the surface.
[Music]
Just destroyed.
This soda can has now
been sitting in this gallium for quite a while.
We actually left a soda can in the gallium overnight,
and so it's really had a chance to absorb a lot.
The gallium did actually solidify at one point,
so it wasn't necessarily sitting in there
like constantly overnight
because it only has the effect
when gallium is actually liquid and can be absorbed.
So it's several hours worth,
and and there's already some deformations that have happened.
You can actually,
if you can see into the can, well,
if you can see along the side,
this entire side of the can is just shattered.
Also, you can see that the can is shorter.
Like this can is raised up higher at the bottom,
but it's still lower down than this one.
Our can is just, I think melting down.
I want to try and--
I'm going to try and pick it up.
The bottom is like--
Oh, the bottom just tore open
when it caught on this other piece of aliminum.
Okay. So this is interesting.
Where that air bubble was,
where we couldn't actually get it.
>> The very bottom still ##-- >> The very bottom is just fine,
because there was an air bubble protecting it from the gallium.
So this is an aluminum can,
with about the structural integrity of aluminum foil.
Maybe a little, yeah, less than aluminum foil.
And it's not just where it was.
You can see that it was cracking all the way up the edges,
and this is just tearing as I touch it like newspaper.
There it goes.
RIght there.
So this...
This what were pulling off right now,
I think is the plastic coating
that's on the inside of aluminum cans,
which is now also soaking gallium.
So it looks like metal.
But this right here,
so has now had that coating removed.
So this is just aluminum, that's soaked up gallium.
It wasn't in direct contact in the bottom,
but just falls to pieces.
Oh, man.
I mean, a normal aluminum can isn't hard to crunch,
but it doesn't fall into pieces like that just did.
And most of that can wasn't in the gallium,
it was just connected to it,
and it just drinks the gallium up into the metal.
All right, aluminum mesh.
Down where it was in contact is just falling apart.
Aluminum reacts to water.
We had a lot of aluminum sitting in here.
I want to know
if this gallium will now react to water even just a little bit.
Let's pour a drop of water in, and see
if it does anything.
Damn.
This gallium soaked up so much aluminum,
it's now reacting to water.
Now, if you saw our experiments before when we
were dripping the gallium into a glass of water,
it wasn't doing anything.
It was just sort of pebbling up.
This is not gallium supposed to do.
This is the aluminum.
So for our next test, we are actually going
to try something that we have seen before.
It's called the Gallium Beating Heart.
Now, you take about 2 grams worth of gallium.
You drop it into sulfuric acid.
Then you introduce a metal rod.
It has to be an iron rod,
and when you do that,
it causes the gallium to expand and contract so fast,
it actually looks like a beating heart.
So we've got
our six more concentration of sulfuric acid here,
which has been warming up gently on the stove.
It should be warm enough
that it will melt are two pieces of gallium,
which will then for ito beads, which will then join together.
We'll start with one, just in case.
[Music]
So the hydrogen is still coming off of this,
but as soon as I touch it with a piece of iron,
the gallium itself should relax.
That's we want to have happen.
Soon as I let go,
it's going to contract, and we want to see that change.
There you go.
You can see the bead is moving.
It's not just being pushed by the iron,
it's actually reacting to the iron.
It's running away from it.
I'm not moving, guys.
It's doing that on its own.
[Music]
Okay, so this is kind of cool.
As soon as he does that, you can see
that the whole piece of gallium relaxes.
So that's what's happening here.
I think I said it a few times already,
but it's contracting and relaxing.
The iron is actually causing it to relax?
So what's causing
that little beating heart is that...
Iron comes in contact with it,
which makes it relax just a little bit,
but it relaxes out from under the iron,
so it's no longer touching the iron,
and so it beats back up.
And then it beats back up and touches the iron again,
and the whole cycle just starts and goes over and over.
Which is also why we're able to push it around
without even really touching it.
Another test we're gonna try is this rather solid aluminum bar.
We'll just sand this down a little bit,
and sit in our warm gallium.
In this one,
we're actually going to let go for a while.
This is going to be heating up on our stove for about two days,
because I really want to give it a chance soaked through.
Okay.
Well, we actually pulled a cooking show trick,
and we didn't put this in, and let it sit live right now.
I've put one of these bars into some gallium two days ago,
and now, we're showing
you what happens when you pull it out.
But it really has been sitting for two days so...
That completely intact aluminum bar got eaten away a lot.
Before and after.
These were exactly the same length too.
So one thing I do want to test is the strength.
I don't know how this one will hold up to this one.
So I'm just going to take a hammer.
I'm gonna hit this one for a control test,
and then I hit this one and see if it's any different.
I haven't done this before,
so I'm not sure how it's going to go.
[Music]
It slightly dented it.
That's about all.
Let's try it with this one.
[Music]
Oh, well, it...
It wasn't as fragile as I thought it was going to be,
but it is definitely still coming apart.
It looks like metallic tree bark.
That's kind of coolest, like aluminum core.
Very organic looking texture on it.
More robust than I thought it was going to be,
but this is not what happens to regular aluminum.
That has just turned into shards.
We have melted down some aluminum in our furnace,
and now we have some solid gallium pieces,
and we want to see what happens if we put the solid gallium
into the liquid aluminum.
I know it will melt them,
but I want to see if it'll melt them down well,
if it will turn into all one alloy,
and then see if that's any different after we pour
that out, and let it cool down.
[Music]
It's got some slag in it, but it's molten.
[Music]
The aluminum is reacting to the water.
Yep, almost instantly.
Yep, that's pretty normal.
But we're using sand,
so that all of that reacting boiling water can escape down,
and it doesn't cause the aluminum to pop up.
Do you think it's actually going to stay together in one piece,
or is it going to be too brittle and just fall apart?
I think it'll stay together.
I think it's going to be really really weak bar here.
See? Okay.
This is what I want.
I want to know.
Nope.
That just fall apart?
It's just--
it fell right apart.
Let's see if that same thing happened with the big ones,
but that is very weak so far.
>> It's just like-- >> Crumbly almost.
It's like sand.
It's not holding together at all.
Like it's going to form,
it's going to solidify just fine,
but we're going to be able to just crush this.
[Music]
We now have an alloy with gallium and aluminum here.
Let's just to see what happens when I drop it.
>> Yes. >> It's like shock.
It's fragile.
Wow.
Very fragile.
The world's worst metal to construct with,
gallium-aluminum alloy.
So this is just been soaking in the water for just a minute,
and like I think it's actually extracting the gallium
from the aluminum here.
It's just all the water is reacting with the aluminum,
and then what gets left behind is little gallium silver beads.
Our aluminum-gallium bar that we broke into lots
of pieces has now been sitting in the water overnight,
and I am very surprised at what happened.
It is amazing.
I thought maybe it would like fall apart a little bit,
but this is...
Now, you can't really see into the liquid.
The liquid is just opaque gray,
but we still have hydrogen rising.
So the gallium itself completely ruined.
This is fun too because,
what's coming off the, all these bubbles forming?
[Music]
Okay, but now...
Check out-- Check out what happens to the metal rod
that we made.
We now have metallic sponge.
It like--
It just absorbed water.
It just pulled itself apart, sucking in the water.
It barely holds itself together.
I can squish it.
All of those bar pieces just turned into this.
I can't even pick one up without breaking it.
It smooshes.
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