Hey there, work-from-homers.
I reckon this odyssey is just the beginning
of a lot of people feeling bored and looking for something to do
when they're at home.
So I gathered three simple science things
that you can try out in your own house using
the stuff that you see here.
You can impress your roommates, your mom, your siblings--
I melted it to measure the speed of light.
Wow.
Whatever you want.
I just thought maybe it would be really fun.
So let's kick into it.
Being stuck at home is really hard.
The house that you live in probably
feels really big when you come home after a long day.
But now that you've been inside for like two weeks,
it probably is starting to feel a little bit small.
You can only vacuum the house so many times.
You can only do all your laundry twice or three times
until you need something else to it.
So I thought maybe you could take your mind off
of the size of your home and whatever is going on
with your laundry situation.
So here we are with some very simple science experiments.
But before we get too far into it,
let's go ahead and make a cup of tea.
Wait a minute.
Did you hear that?
That water, it sounds wrong.
Doesn't it?
Let me let me do it again.
Let me make sure that this is hot, and we'll try it again.
[KETTLE WHISTLES]
That sounds a lot better.
You can hear the difference between hot water
and cold water.
So the reason this happens is due to fluid dynamics.
See, water is a chemical containing
two hydrogens and one oxygen. At room temperature,
the water contains a specific amount of energy,
and it's pretty sticky actually, like it
tends to stick together.
Think surface tension.
As we heat the water, we're imparting energy to it.
And as the molecules gain energy, they get excited.
They'll literally start to move around inside the fluid faster.
If we keep heating it, the additional energy
causes them to burst forth from the surface and become a gas,
and they're zooming around.
And as they calm down, they start to lose energy again,
and they condense on other services like a cold beverage.
And the reason that your ears can tell the difference
is because the cold water has less energy in it.
It's literally thicker than the hot water.
In chem speak, it's more viscous.
Is that not incredible?
It is.
So now that you know that you have this ability,
Flavia had the idea of putting it to the test time.
Hi, babe.
Hi.
This is Flavia.
So what are we doing?
I prepared hot water and cold water,
more like boiling water and water from the freezer.
And we're going to see it Trace can tell the difference.
OK.
And you can play along at home too.
We've got a microphone here, so you
can hear what she's pouring.
I'm going to cover up my eyes.
And we will not audibly tell you the answer.
So if you cover up your eyes at home too, you can play along.
Here we go.
And if you hear rain, I apologize.
I can't do anything about that.
How many fingers am I holding up?
I have no idea.
My eyes closed also because I don't know.
It just feels-- it feels right.
Ready?
Ready
Number one.
[WATER FLOWING]
I think that's hot water.
Number two.
[WATER FLOWING]
That one is cold water.
Number three.
[WATER FLOWING]
I think that one was cold water too.
All right.
How'd I do.
You got the second one wrong.
It was hot, hot, cold.
Oh, but I was close.
You were close.
Because I went hot twice in a row,
I think you were waiting for the cold.
Maybe.
Maybe I was.
How did you guys do at home?
Let us know in the comments.
You can also do this with your friends
or your family while your social distancing.
That's right.
So thanks, babe.
You're welcome.
Use a chocolate bar to determine the speed of light.
So now that we've got back on track,
now let's talk about the speed of light.
Over the years, a lot of people in the comments
have asked me how we know what the speed of light is
or how we knew what it was before we
had space travel and computers.
And it turns out, it manifests itself
a lot in our everyday lives.
We just don't really pay that much attention to it.
For example, a microwave uses light to heat your food.
So you can use it to find out the speed of light.
Well, a microwave plus a little bit of math.
You can get a chocolate bar if you're
allowed to microwave one.
Go to the microwave, open it up, and look at the doorjamb.
Inside of the doorjamb, it should
have the frequency of the wave that the microwave uses.
Write down that frequency.
Next, remove the rotating dish from the microwave,
place your target on a microwave safe plate
in the center of the old nuker.
Depending on the power of your microwave,
you may have to check it sooner, so keep an eye on it.
While it does that, I wanted to say thank you
for watching this.
If you are a patron, extra thank you.
If you aren't, it's really easy to join,
and every dollar goes to supporting this channel
and making it better.
Another way you can support the channel is to share this video
or share your favorite video from the channel
with your friends.
I'm trying to grow the channel, and I can't do it without you.
Oh, the microwave.
So it turns out, this isn't as simple
as maybe it was posed to be in the book that I read.
And I ended up melting all of my chocolate bars.
So instead, I used chocolate chips.
I spread them out pretty evenly around the center
to capture the microwave.
What we should get is a map of where the standing wave is
inside of the microwave.
So now comes the fun bit.
We're going to look for the divots in the chocolate.
So take the target out and grab a measuring tape or a ruler
with centimeters on it.
Measure the gaps between the melty bits in centimeters
and then multiply that by 2.
That is the wavelength of the microwaves that are produced.
I bet you thought the waves were microscopic
because it's microwave.
First mind blow, they ain't.
Take your wavelength and multiply it by the frequency
that you got earlier from the door of the microwave.
If the frequency is in megahertz,
multiply that again by 1 million.
If it's in gigahertz, multiply it by 1 billion.
The number that you get is the speed of light.
Isn't that awesome?
You just calculated the speed of light
using nothing but a chocolate bar
and your microwave and a little measuring tape.
Isn't that cool?
The actual speed of light is in the neighborhood
of 300 million meters per second.
So if we put in the numbers we just
got from the microwave and our chocolate chips,
we get just about 304 million meters per second,
which is so close to the actual speed, like 1% off.
The reason this works is because the microwave's magnetron gun
generates a standing wave.
The wave spins around its axis heating the food.
The rotating tray is what moves the food through that standing
wave.
Without it, it would only heat part of it.
And that's why when you do this with a solid piece
of chocolate, you end up with these little dips or divots.
I made a little spreadsheet so that if you
want to share this around, it's really easy to do at home.
You can just plug the numbers in,
and it'll give you the answer.
But I hope that you did the math because this is a science
channel.
I hope that you did the math.
I also love when history can be worked into these things
because you know me, I love history.
I like using the chocolate bar for this experiment because it
hearkens back to Percy Spencer, a World War II radar scientist
who realized that by standing too close to a magnetron gun--
part of a radar system--
he would actually have a melted candy bar in his pocket.
And he thought, huh, that's interesting.
So he got some popcorn, and he put
the popcorn near the magnetron gun,
and the popcorn kernels started to pop.
And he thought, this is really cool.
And like all good science, it starts
with what the F or huh more than I'm
going to do with thing, which is just the best.
And since then, he ended up creating what we now
know as the microwave.
Feel free to eat that chocolate bar now
that you've done your calculations.
I know I am going to eat this as soon as this video is done.
But before we get to the end of the video,
we have to do a third experiment.
And for that, you're going to need the plastic water
bottle and a match.
Let's make a cloud in a bottle.
Really, let's do it.
What you're going to need is this clear plastic water
bottle.
You want to fill it up about 2/3 of the way with hot or warm
water, not hot enough that you can't hold onto it but warm.
Then get a match.
Light it.
Let it burn for a second.
Blow it out.
Immediately drop it in the bottle
and close the lid tightly and squeeze the bottle really hard.
When you let go of the bottle, you
made a cloud inside the bottle.
Yeah, isn't that awesome?
So what you've done here is a classic physics experiment
involving a closed system.
You've created a cloud in a bottle.
When you closed the lid of the bottle,
you created a closed system.
Then you put that system under pressure.
The volume of gas inside of the system
hasn't changed, neither has the volume of water.
The only thing that has changed is
the amount of pressure on the system as a whole.
The reason this one works is because when we let off
the pressure, we create a low pressure environment, allowing
the water to coalesce on the little bits of smoke
left behind by the match.
Voila, clouds.
And this kind of relationship between pressure, volume,
and temperature in gases is what keeps your refrigerator
cold, what keeps your diesel engine's running,
and what keeps clouds in the air.
Make sure you try this experiment with kids.
Trust me, it's going to be amazing.
Wow, OK, that was a lot.
So now that we are done with all this messy chocolate
and stuff-- gross--
I only set up three experiments for today.
But if you want more to learn, there
are other places to go, like Curiosity Stream, for example.
On Curiosity Stream, you can learn about us and our planet,
even our universe.
And they helped sponsor this video today.
Thank you to them.
Curiosity Stream has thousands of documentaries
on interesting, thoughtful topics.
And they have them across science and history,
the environment, technology, society, psychology.
You name it, they got it.
If you want to understand the coronavirus,
for example, they've got something on that.
You want to know about math and nature,
they've got a show called Nature's Mathematics.
Want to know how the internet changed the world?
Derek Muller can help you.
Curiosity Stream's got you, fam.
Join Curiosity Stream with my link,
curiositystream.com/trace.
The promo code is trace, and you'll get one month for free
to try it out.
And if that's all you want, that's cool.
But it's only $2.99 a month after that, so
think about sticking around.
And if you pick up an annual subscription,
it's even more affordable, one, and two,
you get Nebula as a bonus, which supports
me and other educational creators too.
See, Curiosity Stream believes that small creators are still
really valuable.
So when a bunch of us thoughtful,
digital, native creators banded together
to make Nebula, a streaming service just for us,
they wanted to collect.
They were like, we want in.
Nebula is a creator-owned video streaming service.
We can do experiments, originals, and our own things
without having to worry about the algorithm.
You get so many documentaries and shows on Nebula,
and you get even more with Curiosity Stream.
And together, they're even better.
Curiositystream.com/trace, promo code, trace.
Try it out.
Let me know if you do, so I can thank you for supporting me
in so many different ways.
I love these experiments.
This is what got me excited about science
is doing stuff like this, getting my hands dirty
and finding things in my own little science lab
at home, i.e.
the kitchen, to do stuff.
Now you know how to calculate the speed of light.
You know how to make a cloud in a bottle.
You know how to-- what did I do first?
Oh my gosh, that was so long ago.
You can do all sorts of cool stuff.
And there are other science communicators
all over the internet doing stuff like this.
I put a couple of links down in the description.
If you need a little science in your day, what better place
than to come to science enthusiasts like us
right here on your phone, tablet, wherever.
So make sure that you tweet at me, you tag me in your stories
if you end up doing any of these experiments.
And let me know if you want more science like this
in the comments.
I love doing it.
It just takes a little longer than I'm used to,
but I'm totally into trying.
[PHONE RINGS]
Brother, I'm filming right now.
You're wasting my film.
What's that from?
It's from Rush Hour 2.
Obvi.
Tell everyone to like and subscribe.
Support him on Patriarch, like, and subscribe
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And tell friends who you think would also
like his content to like and subscribe and support him
on Patriarch.
It helps to create better content, just like this.
Also, what's on the table looks really good?
Chocolate.
Oh.
Yeah, it's pretty great.
I melted it to measure the speed of light.
Wow.
Yeah, it's cool,
Like cooking a chicken if you slap it hard enough.
Wait, no that's not [INAUDIBLE].
What?
I've got go.
I'm working.
Google it.
OK.
Bye.
Keep your hands clean.
I'm Trace.
I'm going to have some chocolate.
And I'll see you in the future.