RAPTORZ YZ left a comment asking whether or not the styro-slicer' could cut through dry ice
and I'm actually not really sure what would happen if we tried.
So I got out my styro-slicer and I went and picked up some dry ice so today we can put that experiment to the test
Dry ice is just a solid block of Carbon dioxide,
so when we set it down on a warm surface like our countertop it releases a vapor of gas underneath which makes it float around
like an Air hockey puck
It's actually not a very good idea to touch the stuff with your bare skin, so for the rest of this experiment
I'm gonna be using gloves
now a lot of you will remember my tutorial on making the styro-slicer
This is designed to use electricity and pump a current through a thin stainless steel wire. This generates a lot of heat
and it easily slices through styrofoam. When we power on the styro-slicer this thin metal wire can reach temperatures above
1,000 degrees Celsius. On the other hand dry ice is minus 79 degrees Celsius.
So what will happen when these two extremes
collide will the dry ice freeze the wire solid or will the wire generate enough heat to easily glide through the block of ice
Your guess is as good as mine. So let's flip the switch and see exactly what happens. Oh, it's like freezing to my table here
Alright, so I just got the wire set to normal power. Let's go ahead and introduce the dry ice and see what happens.
Made a little bit of a squealing noise there like a little mini velociraptor
hear that?
now look at the wire it actually cools down very quickly and
Not making much progress. Let's go ahead and turn up the power. This is high power on the normal setting here we go
Yeah, you can see it only gets about an 8 maybe a sixteenth of an inch into the block and then it just stops solid
now if I rub it up and down the wire I can use this kind of like as a wire saw and
That's actually working a little bit better
But it's still not super impressive. I think it's time to crank this thing to overdrive. What happens when the dry ice touches it?
Listen to that. you hear that? It's making like a really high-pitched vibration
At this rate, it looks like we're probably moving about one inch every two minutes
So I suppose you could use it to cut a block of dry ice
But it doesn't seem very practical. you'd probably be better off using something like a bandsaw
You know what the hot wire foam cutter does get pretty hot, but I don't think it's match for a block of dry ice
I'm cranking this thing up pretty heavy to the point where the wires going to snap and we're not really making much progress.
[ooh] And there goes the wire. I just snapped it so to answer your question RAPTORZ
It looks like the styro-slicer' will not cut through a block of dry ice or at least it won't do it very effectively
but the fact that it doesn't actually does make sense. we've got a relatively large and cold mass battling against a relatively small warm
mass and of course this is going to win every time which is really too bad because I was honestly hoping that it would I
was hoping we could cut all kinds of cool little shapes out of it
But alas hey what's amazing is like even though I cut into this block. I'm having a really hard time getting it back out
It's like the ice sealed up and somehow the wire is trapped and has to cut its way back out
In fact it takes so much energy to warm up this block of dries that even if we blasted it with a superhot propane torch
You can see the flame barely put the dent in it as well
You see two minutes of intense heat from a propane torch
And it barely even put a dent in that thing that is crazy you want to hear the most annoying sound in the world
Yeah, cutting dry ice with the styro-slicer' not very effective wouldn't recommend it
But it was a fun experiment and I appreciate you asking so now
What are we going to do with all this leftover dry ice I do have an idea that involves going outside and using my fish
Pond and you'll see in the next video what we end up doing with it
Thanks so much for your suggestions in your comments. Keep them coming and I'll be looking for you in the next video
Talk to you then
Excuse you dry ice is so random
you