Today, we're testing at an experiment to see what happens if we combine silicone mold rubber with liquid nitrogen.
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Over the years we have done several cool experiments with liquid nitrogen and with silicone rubber, and we've also had...
...hundreds of comments asking to see what happens if we combine the two; liquid nitrogen and silicone rubber together!
Today, we are going to put those to the test, and hopefully it'll be exhaustive enough that everyone knows what happens.
Me too, because I've never done this before! Here's the basic idea: We'll take some uncured silicone, mix it with liquid nitrogen...
...we'll pour some liquid nitrogen into the uncured silicone, and then we'll see how the cured silicone reacts with the liquid nitrogen.
We've got some silicone rubber and the catalyst that goes with it some styrofoam cups.
Liquid nitrogen, a little bit, is in this cup here. We've also got these pieces of cured silicone rubber.
Now, these are things that I already poured out, and just let cure completely, so they are no longer liquid.
We're gonna test all of these!
So the first step is gonna be mixing up some silicone rubber, and then pouring some liquid nitrogen into a cup.
Normally when this silicone is mixed up properly, it takes forty-five minutes to an hour to cure.
That is effected by humidity, and temperature and so what we're gonna do is mix them up;
some of it will just get poured into a separate mold, and some of it will be in a cup, full of liquid nitrogen,
and we'll keep topping that off, so it stays full and freezing cold the whole time.
After about an hour, we'll come back and we'll see how the two compare.
116 grams, so technically, the correct amount is 10% by weight, which would be 11.6 grams.
We are gonna maybe add a little bit more.
Twelve or thirteen grams, that should speed up the process a little bit, but not too much
I worked for several years as a sculptor and mold maker, and I have mixed up so much silicone rubber in my time.
Oh, man...hundreds and hundreds, possibly thousands of batches. Maybe not thousands but...
…many hundreds! There's our silicone that's nice and mixed.
Now let's take a cup, and just fill it all the way with liquid nitrogen.
And we're gonna take that cup, and put it inside two other cups, just for some extra insulation.
We want this to hold on to its cold for as long as possible.
First Test: We're gonna pour some silicone down into this cup. That's gonna stay in there for like forty-five minutes to an hour.
Then we're gonna pour some more of it, just right onto the table.
Once it's cured, it will peel up nicely, and then the rest of it, we're gonna see what happens if we pour some liquid nitrogen into the container with silicone.
Silicone, like everything, makes the liquid nitrogen boil. It has formed some very interesting shapes already.
It just froze as it dribbled in. It may not move from those spots the entire time.
I'm gonna have to top that off, because the heat from the silicone has obviously boiled away a lot of our liquid nitrogen there.
Now let's just pour some out onto the table...
We're just gonna let that sit there. It'll puddle out a little bit more, and then it'll cure into a sort of semicircle.
Top that off. It's nice and full.
Now let's see what happens if we pour some of this liquid nitrogen into our silicone.
So normally the silicone just puddles back down, kind of immediately you can see that it's holding its shape a little bit more.
It's a...less of a syrup ,and I don't know of a food that's that consistency.
I'd say we're almost a cream cheese texture there. Some parts of it are just hard where the liquid nitrogen...
...just sat in contact with it. It's--it's crunchy.
Here in the middle, it's still a little bit goopy over on the sides where I wasn't stirring very actively. It's just completely hardened.
So it kind of slows, it down cools it down.
It stops being quite so runny. You saw how easily it poured out of the container.
Some parts of it are solid; other parts of it are just cold enough that they're very slow.
I think if I hold it for a while. It will start to drip out of non completely frozen parts.
But, before it was just pouring out at this point. Now, we're gonna test a little bit of already cured silicone. This is very stretchy.
This is very stretchy...extremely flexible.
Set this down in, and see if it changes...
I'd say that's different. Wow!
That's not just a little less flexible! That just completely shattered!
I'm gonna try and smash this on the table and see if it kind of explodes.
So silicone definitely freezes, and when it does, it becomes very brittle.
Let's see what happens if we freeze it, but then just let it sit out until it thaws.
It's taking its old shape back...regaining some flexibility.
It's still cold, but, it's not brittle-cold. I'm able to twist it again. Gonna put my hands down...
Just warm that all the way up. I'd say that's back to flexible. It seems completely back to normal.
Alright, I've got one more bigger block. We'll just drop this down and see what we get.
It warmed up too much. I got some interesting cracks in it.
But it had warmed up enough. That's weird though. It's still like holding the shape I twist it into. Oh
Oh, that's funny!
It's almost like a hot metal!
Deforms to the shape I smash it into but, I can't really play with it or move it from there.
I think the inside is too cold, and the outside has warmed up just a little bit.
Our silicone that we poured down into the liquid nitrogen has now been sitting in there for quite a while.
We've topped the liquid nitrogen off several times.
Here's the piece that we poured down on the table...
…and I did get a little impatient, and tried to peel it off when it wasn't quite ready...
...so it got some wrinkles in it, but at this point, it's basically cured all the way.
It's just stretchy, twisty rubber just like the other stuff we made. Now we want to take our frozen silicone out of the cup.
We're just gonna set it in this bowl and see what happens.
I think that the cold has probably stopped all of the chemical reaction.
The catalyst has not began to cure or solidify. I think as this heats up, it's just gonna melt the funny stringy shapes...
…we have are just gonna turn into a blob.
I think it's just gonna be goopy, but I haven't done this before, so I don't know. Let's find out!
Clink! That's not a sound silicone usually makes. Oh! And it's breaking too.
I'm gonna go try and pour off the nitrogen here.
We can already see the really thin strands. I was just blowing to clear out some nitrogen, and my breath is so much warmer. Watch this!
It's puddling already. I think that already proves what I suspected is correct.
That is completely gooey and liquid still. Lets keep letting that melt.
This has now melted all the way through, and look at that that is just gooey liquid.
That is not cured at all. Same batch mixed at the same time, and this actually has not cured 100%.
I was remembering that this was like forty-five-minute silicone,
but I think I am off on that, because I mixed this at a little over 10%, and it's still not cured all the way.
But you can see there's a big difference. Like the top of this has really cured. It's got a skin over it.
And then this right here is just...
…goopy...completely. While it's wet, silicone sticks to like everything, and then once it cures, it sticks to pretty much nothing. Weird stuff!
Thank you for all our watchers who wanted to know what happens if you put silicone into liquid nitrogen!
They are fun to do. We don't want to do too many of them,
but if you've got any cool ideas of things you want to see us test out that we haven't done before let us know down in the comments.
We might just try it out!
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