[both] Whoa.
[Grant] That was cool.
Whats up guys! Welcome back to the lab.
I'm Grant Thompson, The King Of Random.
And I'm Derick from the YouTube channel, Veritasium.
And today, we are playing with fire and ice.
I just got back from the gas station, where I picked up this bag of ice.
But this is no ordinary bag of ice. You see when we pour this ice into a bowl and light it off with a torch,
you can see that the ice burns. Why is that?
So were gonna come clean guys. This bowl wasn't completely empty when we dumped in the ice. I first sprinkled a fine layer of
a chemical called calcium carbide, CaC2.
Now this calcium carbide, I just went down to a chemical supply store and picked up for about 5 to 6 dollars
But this stuffs actually been used for centuries. Originally it was used in miners lamps.
They would put it in add a little bit of water and it would pump out acetylene gas that they could light
And that's how they would light their way in the mines funny enough calcium carbide its main purpose today is to still produce
Acetylene gas and when you mix acetylene with oxygen it produces one of the hottest flames burning around 3,500 degrees Celsius
Which is ridiculous that is really hot its hardcore if we pour some of the actual calcium carbide out here
You can see what it looks like they almost look like little grayish black granules of Rock
Not super exciting until they make contact with water the instant this stuff touches water it starts releasing this misty white vapour which is
Extremely flammable and as we've just experienced as soon as it's lit
It's a very very hot flame and we could feel this from quite a distance yeah, yeah, we just lit ice on fire
That's really cool. Let's talk about that for a second. I actually have a little molecule kit
Let me should I bring it over here so the calcium carbide has two major components
Obviously your calcium and your C2 and their triple bonded these are
Carbons that are triple bonded you add in some water. What ends up happening is they break apart the calcium off
of there, and you form calcium
hydroxide which is CaOH2 like that and then the hydrogen's end up going on there and that creates your
Acetylene gas also known as ethyne
And this is a very flammable stuff that reacts with oxygen
And creates a very very hot flame that is an amazing reaction what I think is so cool about it, right?
Is that when you do it on ice you start it with just a little bit of water
So you just get this reaction starting get a little bit of acetylene
But then of course once the fire kicks in now more ice create more water that for the reaction producing more acetylene
And it's like a self feeding cycle exactly what I find is really interesting and I'm not sure what exactly is going on here
But look all the soot look at all this black residue right here
and we've got little chunks floating around in the air and
It what's really interesting is we just have this calcium carbide
and ice like nothing else went into it and now we're left with bubbles and uhh
What an interesting smell did you smell the gas coming off as well? Yeah, I did
Yeah, it's not quite the smell of rotten eggs
It smells a little bit different, but I would put it in the same family the same category. It's a little bit like um
Like gunpowder yes, what if it smells like that. Yeah, almost like a burned rotten egg smell yeah for sure but very very flammable
Who knows what that would do to your body something super I'm sure was basic, right?
So it would dissolve a lot of things it dissolves your flesh. Yes
Calcium Carbide is pretty cool
But one of the things that's made me wonder is where does it come from how is it made and as I did a little
Bit of research what I found is in an industrial process
They actually use an Arc furnace with carbon rods, and take coke and lime and burn it together at very high temperatures around 2,200 degrees
Celsius so you could probably do that with your backyard foundry, right?
Well, maybe not the backyard foundry
But I do have a mini Arc furnace ah which is basically the same thing on a smaller scale
So I wonder could we produce calcium carbide that might be an experiment for another day, so there you have a guys now
You know how to use a little bit of calcium carbide to make fire on ice.
This is a very cool experiment very very messy very very dangerous but very very cool
Thanks so much for joining us for this experiment guys.
Huge thanks to Derek with Veritasium for bringing out his models and is showing us the science behind why this works you can go check him?
Out I've got a link down in the description and we looking for you in the next video talk to you then!
Easier than animating 3D models. Yeah
So there you go guys now. You know how to use a little bit of calcium carbide mixed with ice
That's the vehicles coming back, Sorry. So there you have it guys -son of a b***h-
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