- What's up, guys, we're back in the lab
with an experiment you were told never to try at home.
Today we're experimenting with water
and high voltage electricity.
Now we're told all the time
never to get electricity even close to water, but why?
What exactly would happen, if we accidentally
dipped electrical cables into a glass of water?
The purpose of this video today is to find out.
Now, for our first experiment,
I've rigged up this very unsafe device,
which basically takes the electrical power out of my house
and splits it into these two wires.
If I touch these two wires together now,
you can see the light flickers behind me.
When they're disconnected, the light is off,
but if the wires touch, the light turns back on.
Now for this first test,
I've filled up this glass with distilled water.
Now, distilled water has nothing in it.
It should be pure and non-conductive,
meaning electricity should not be able to flow through it.
Let's see if that's really the case.
Here we go.
(funky pop music)
Absolutely nothing.
So, you can see that both wires are completely submerged
in the water here and nothing is happening to the light.
It's not even flickering,
but let's try touching the wires underneath the water
and see what happens.
(pinging)
Wow, it made this little pop
and I saw a little flash of electricity
and the light turned on behind me.
(pinging)
It's actually pretty cool
and I can see little bubbles coming off the electrodes.
It makes me wonder if those are little hydrogen bubbles.
I think we've got a little mini electrolysis generator here.
So update, guys, we have confirmed
that distilled water is non-conductive.
We had absolutely no reaction.
So I've gone ahead and filled our glass up
with tap water now to see if there's any difference.
Electricity versus tap water, here we go.
(funky pop music)
Oh, interesting, look at that.
It looks like the light is actually turning on a little bit.
It's not like brightening right up,
but they're definitely is some electrical flow.
If I pull the wires further apart, it gets dimmer
and if I bring them closer together,
it gets a little bit brighter.
That is interesting.
Look at that, if I move the wires,
the light kind of flickers
and these wires aren't touching,
they're just submerged in the water itself.
So apparently, tap water is slightly conductive.
I mean, it won't run the full current through it,
but you can see there definitely
is some kind of electrical connection,
because these wires are not touching
and of course, if you touch the wires together,
then it goes to full bright.
That's amazing.
So, obviously we're not getting the full current flow
through the water, but we are getting something.
That's very interesting.
Now, I think the original concerns
of electricity mixing with water
stem back to when people had portable heaters
falling into their bathtub,
or dropping their hairdryer into the bathtub.
We have to remember that bathtubs are not just tap water.
They have soaps and shampoos in them.
So for this next experiment,
let's try mixing in a little bath soap to the water
and seeing how that changes things up.
Making a little bathtub martini (laughs).
If it's not dirty yet, it will be.
Voila!
OK, our wires are live, here we go.
(funky pop music)
And you can see things are a little bit brighter.
Oh yeah, that light is quite a bit brighter.
I wouldn't say it's full bright.
Those are the wires touching and that's disconnected.
I'd say we're maybe 50 to 75% of the power,
but that's quite enough, that's enough to give you a tingle,
if you're sitting in a bathtub
with a high current device like a hairdryer.
So yeah, bath soap and water
definitely increases the conductivity.
Interesting.
So that was pretty cool.
We saw exactly what house power does in soapy water,
so I think its time to level it up now to high voltage.
Now you guys remember this thing,
this is a big, old bulky neon sign transformer.
It pumps out 12,000 volts of electricity,
but it's current limited to 30 milli amps.
These are the kind of things,
that used to power those big neon signs,
that you see around the city.
Now in contrast, if you ever get out
to a fast food restaurant,
or any kind of business for that matter,
you'll probably see a neon sign like this.
These are still powered by a neon sign transformer,
but because of newer technology,
they can deliver the same power at a fraction of the weight.
Now I want to give a shout out to my friend, Jerome,
he's the one that gave me this neon sign.
Unfortunately, it's broken, so there's probably
not much use for it, except for the power pack on the back.
Now, to salvage a precious power pack like this,
all we have to do is disconnect it from the sign,
clip the wires as far up as we can go
and then strip the cable back
to expose the small wire inside.
Now, the voltage we are using
out of our house power was 120 volts.
In contrast, these are 10 to 12,000 volts,
exponentially higher and that's why high voltage signs
have such a thick casing of rubber around them.
So for this last experiment today,
I wanna demonstrate the power of high voltage electricity.
I've cleaned and dried this glass completely,
'cause we're gonna go back to using distilled water,
which theoretically is non-conductive, right.
So how will high voltage electricity
work with distilled water?
We're about to find out.
Now, there are a couple of really important things
to understand about high voltage electricity.
Number one, it's so powerful,
it can actually jump through the air.
A normal electric circuit, you have to touch
the wires together, but not with high voltage.
High voltage can jump the gap
and form its own electrical bridge,
which means flimsy little gloves like this
aren't gonna save you, so even if you're wearing gloves,
high voltage electricity can still surge through your body.
Now luckily 30 milli amps isn't enough
to stop your heart theoretically,
but we never really wanna take that chance,
so whenever you're dealing with high voltage electricity,
a good rule of thumb is to put one hand behind your back
and operate everything else with the other hand.
We wanna avoid the electricity crossing through our heart
as much as possible.
High voltage electricity versus distilled water.
Let's power it up and see what happens.
I'm actually gonna put the tip of this one
down into the water first
and then we'll try this second one and see what happens.
Woah, look at that!
Not only does distilled water conduct electricity,
but the electricity actually jumps to the water,
before it even makes contact.
Look at this.
When I start bringing this second one down,
you'll start hearing it buzzing
(buzzing)
and if I go a little bit further,
it's like little, purple lightning bolts
jumping down to the water.
That's so cool!
If we go right into the water, it completely disappears,
but I can still feel this thing buzzing.
Bring it out slowly.
Oh wow, did you see the water get stuck to that?
That is bizarre, that is really cool.
I was not expecting that.
So this isn't something I was expecting to see,
but as I start pulling the electrodes out of the water,
it seems like the water connects to the electricity,
at least it gets about three-quarters of an inch
off the surface and then drops back down into the dish.
Look at this, I can do both at once.
That is crazy.
It feels like I'm pulling the surface of the water up.
Wow, what happens if I bring them closer together?
Wow!
So apparently the water is even more conductive
than the air, because if I hold the two together
close to the surface of the water,
it will choose to go through the water,
rather than through the air.
That's very interesting
and these little water bridges, that we're making are nuts.
It doesn't seem to matter where
I place the electrode in the dish,
the electrical pattern doesn't change much.
OK, bring them far apart, close together,
it's exactly the same.
(funky pop music and buzzing)
I see like tinges of green in there.
That's kinda cool, huh?
Let me do that again.
OK, we're probably having too much fun,
we'd better stop (laughs).
Very, very cool experiment, guys
and very unexpected with the water sucking up
onto that high voltage electricity.
Of course, the real question is
what does distilled water taste like
after it's been electrified?
Mm, it's very, very warm.
I think there's bits of wire floating in there.
Mmm, it's very interesting.
It's like warm on the top, cold on the bottom,
it tastes electric.
So let's summarize what we've just learned here today.
There's nothing in distilled water, except water itself,
and by nature, it won't conduct electricity.
So we tried using tap water next and found
that it will conduct a small amount of electricity.
We tried adding bath soap and stirring it into the water
and found that it made a substantial difference.
And finally we went back to using distilled water
and high voltage electricity, where we found
that even though the water's non-conductive,
if the voltage is high enough, it'll still jump through it.
Thanks for joining me for this set of experiments today
and a big shout out to my friend, Jerome,
for donating his neon sign to our cause today.
I'll be looking for you guys in the next video.
Talk to you then.
(buzzing)
Electric.
(funky pop music)