>> In the past, we've had a few videos
where we melted down copper,
some where we melted aluminum,
and some where we melted salt.
And today, we're gonna see what happens if we try combining
some of these things.
[Captions by Judy V. at Y Translator] [Music]
[Music]
Hey guys. I am Nate.
Welcome back to this Center of Science,
the concrete pad.
To start off, we'll throw some aluminum into one crucible,
and some salt into the other.
We'll melt both of them at the same time,
and try to pour them both into one muffin tin,
and see what happens as they combine.
[Music]
Alright.
Start by pouring some aluminum into this ingot mold.
That's nice and liquid.
Now let's see what happens if we pour in some salt.
[Music]
Oh, looks like the salt is kind of just floating on the surface of the aluminum.
I'm gonna see if I can stir it.
[Music]
Well, the salt has cooled down.
The aluminum is partially cooled down.
They're both pretty liquid.
I'm going to try same thing in
another ingot, and I won't mix this one.
[Music]
A bit of salt that spilled out as I was trying to pour.
Already cooled down.
Cooled down is a relative term.
It is solidified.
But that piece of salt, I bet still quite toasty.
Ooh, and our aluminum still is liquid right here.
So it's got solidified salt, but liquid metals still going on.
Is that underneath this salt might still be liquid aluminum too,
but I don't want to break through the surface of the salt.
I want to let it cool down entirely while it's in the tin.
[Music]
There we go.
Our aluminum has now solidified,
at least in that one.
We'll give it a little bit more to cool down.
And then we'll try and pop it out of the tin.
This one started sort of moving up at an angle,
not sure what's causing that.
Might be the bottom of the tin has warped a little bit.
Alright, I think our salt and our aluminum,
they're still very warm,
but I think they're cooled down enough
that they're quite solid,
so I'm gonna see if I can flip this pan over and shake them out.
[Music]
There's one.
[Music]
This one doesn't want to come out so well.
Maybe it will come out in pieces.
Oh, there it is.
Well, even though I tried mixing it,
it looks like for the most part,
it's still one piece of aluminum at the bottom,
and then some slightly mixed up salt and aluminum
on top of that piece on the bottom.
And of course, this one where I poured them separate,
they're pretty much separate.
Once this is completely cooled,
which it's still very hot.
Once it's all the way cooled down,
I might see if I can pull these two pieces apart.
Alright, let's try this.
So I'll do salt first,
then aluminum.
[Music]
Alright, I've done aluminum and then salt.
And then I tried the same thing
and mixed it up.
Now, just to see if I get any different result,
I'm gonna pour the salt in first,
and the aluminum on top of it.
[Music]
Pretty sure the aluminum just went right down through the salt
into the tin.
I bet it's gonna end up looking a lot like the one where we didn't mix it.
The color of it really starts to change as it cool down.
That's kind of interesting.
Well, we tried with aluminum.
Let's try this with copper,
which is so much heavier to lift up with a pair of tongs than aluminum is.
[Music]
Oh.
I think my aluminum was still a little bit soft.
Yes, yes it is.
It's kind of like a paste.
Well, I think I was too eager to get that out of the tin.
I'll just flip that back over,
let it cool down on the nice concrete.
Yesterday, we tried melting down the copper ingots
to try and get some molten copper,
but despite sitting in the furnace for 45 minutes,
they wouldn't melt.
It's also possible that they aren't pure copper.
I'm not entirely sure what they were cast from.
They could be an alloy with some other metal.
So today,
we're gonna try melting down just some of this copper pipe,
there's a lot more exposed surface area,
and should go much faster.
[Music]
Our copper is melted,
and I actually put our cup of salt in there as well,
so that should also be liquid.
Let's take them both out of the furnace,
and see what happens if we mix them together.
[Music]
Nice molten copper down in the bottom of that cup.
That looks pretty neat.
Oh, and it cools down quickly.
The pipes were sitting over the edge,
and some of it had spilled,
and so we've just got a little puddle of copper formed at the bottom there.
Here's our copper.
Here is our salt.
Start by pouring the copper into the ingot.
That looks really cool.
Alright, adding some salt.
3, 2, 1.
I think the salt cooled down the copper.
I'm just gonna pour more copper on top of that.
Sinks right through it.
I guess that's not surprising.
The copper melts at almost 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
And our furnace only barely gets above 2000 degrees Fahrenheit.
The salt melts at closer to 1500 degrees Fahrenheit,
and it started cooling down fairly quickly after I took it out of the furnace,
to the point that I think when I poured the molten salt
on to the molten copper,
the heat difference was enough
that the molten salt actually cooled down the copper.
Our cup didn't really love being in the furnace
of that temperature either.
As you can see it's flaking like mad.
So here we have what I believe is now just completely cooled copper
with some still liquid salt on top of it.
The salt is starting to cool down as well.
You can see crystallizing on top.
And it's just gonna keep crystallizing until it's solid all the way through.
And then hopefully, we can get this ingot out of the mold.
Sometimes, our ingots kind of like to bond to the steel.
But I'm hoping that once this one cools down,
we'll be able to get it out just fine.
Molten copper looks awesome.
Here's another piece of copper which doesn't look anything
like copper right now
because it's just so covered in carbon and smoke and stuff,
but that's just copper right there.
I bet we can sand that down,
and maybe even polish it up.
And bring that color back out.
That is now solidified.
But of course, it's still extremely hot.
So we got to give it some time to cool.
[Music]
Well, some aluminum from previously.
[Music]
Oh some of our salt broke out.
The copper still attached.
A very different color of salt.
So having the copper in it may have done something to it.
Looks like we kind of had layering in how the salt cooled.
[Music]
That is pretty well attached there.
I think we're starting to have our entire muffin tin
pop out of the whole tray.
We might need a new muffin tray.
Its probably about that time.
The whole tray is loose.
Just need to kind of tear it the rest the way out.
And then I'm gonna probably tear it open,
if I need to to get the copper out.
Well, I scraped away some salt.
You can see the exposed copper underneath it.
I think the moral of this story is that you should always use
a new muffin tin to pour molten copper into.
Because, man a lot of it is sticking a lot.
I don't know that a new muffin tin would make it stick less,
but I think it would.
Ha!
Well, finally, got the muffin tin off of our salt and copper block.
See if I can break off some more of that.
You can see there's just the exposed copper underneath it,
with not a lot of mixing going on.
Although something turned our salt very very brown.
It's possible that that was just from being heated up in our steel cup,
but we haven't had anywhere near that result before.
So I'm betting somehow,
there's copper mixed into this salt,
at least on some level.
The salt comes off the copper more easily than the copper
came off the muffin tin.
Comparing the aluminum mixed with salt,
and the copper mixed with salt
is kind of strange.
And I don't know if there's a definite correlation,
but the salt and aluminum,
the salt really turns sort of a grayish white,
and aluminum is sort of a grayish white metal.
Whereas with the copper, which is a very orange-brown metal,
our salt really took on a brownish orange color.
Like I said, I don't know for sure that it's any of the metal
being mixed into the salt there,
but it seems to have picked up some of the characteristics of it.
We got some really cool colors from our copper being melted down.
I really like that look.
That's always fun.
Hey guys. Grant here. Quick reminder.
We're giving away a Nintendo Switch and Mario Kart 8.
There's a link down in the description,
so you can get your name on the list.
If that's not what you want,
we're sending the gift receipt as well,
so you can take it back to the store,
and get the cash back instead.
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