Hi everyone! Welcome back to Cody's Lab
1 million! It's a crazy huge number
Thats like, five times the population of salt lake city
and all those people have saw my videos and thought to themselves
"I'd like to see more of that."
and so they click subscribe. And to celebrate I'd
like to make a gold play button. YouTube will
be sending me a gold play button but I
kind of want to make one of my own. Now of
course, the gold play button, the size I'd
like to make out of pure gold would cost
around $50,000. I'd like
to be able to make one of the some point,
but for now I think I'll try a different
gold colored metal, which is perhaps a
little bit more interesting that is
Cesium. Cesium is a highly reactive
alkali metal so this ought to be pretty
interesting. So YouTube did eventually
send me the silver play button, I think I
got it when I had over 500,000
subscribers but you see there it is,
right here. Now I think what I'm going to
do is use this as a mold to make a
Cesium play button.
Oh I see, the whole thing comes apart.
Well there it is.
There's the play button.
Let's go make a silicone mold of it.
Here's hoping that silicone doesn't react with Cesium.
Oh that's perfect.
Still got some bubbles and voids, but you know what, I don't really care.
It's the general play button shape that I needed
So I've welded together some pipe and some
caps as you can see. And I've built me a
little retort here. Now to this I''m going to
add some Lithium. I think I'm gonna stuff
in maybe 10-15 grams of Lithium that's enough
to reduce nearly 200 grams of Cesium. So
this, this will be a little bit excess.
Now I'm following the Lithium up with some
Cesium Chloride gonna add about 250 grams here.
And to finish, a tiny bit of mineral oil,
just to displace the Oxygen.
So I got the 'tort in the fire,
hopefully the Cesium will vaporize and condense in this pipe,
and wind up down here in this glass
bulb which is full of mineral oil. Now this here
isn't sealed on super well as you can see
I just got this rubber gasket there,
but,
it should keep the air out.
So, let's turn on the fire.
In order to get the Cesium to start distilling I need to get this whole thing right here
at around 1200ºF,
hot enough to melt Aluminum.
Looks like the mineral oil is starting to distill over.
Looks like the Cesium is beginning to react.
You see it, some Cesium vapours getting down in there.
And it just blew something up.
Shoot.
It appears that we had a boil over.
That's actually not Cesium that's burning right there that's Lithium.
Like some Lithium came over into the flask.
(sigh)
Not sure what to do about this.
Put out the fire for one.
So I think the problem was that I tried
too much, too quickly. So as you can see I've
scaled back the size of the distillation
apparatus and I'm using a more constant heat source.
So, I'll have to run this several times but
I know this setup will work cause I've done
this before. If you haven't already seen I
got another video which I'll link over here,
in which I made Cesium at home.
Let's let this run, and see if it works.
If it does, well,
I'll just do it six more times.
There we go. that's the way to distill Cesium.
Looks like the distillation is about done
and that's a pretty sizable chunk of Cesium there.
But, it's still not as much as I want.
So here's the play button mold, and
here's the Cesium that I've produced.
So let's take this Cesium out with a syringe.
Oh
Before I do that, let's actually put some
mineral oil on the play button, just to keep
the Cesium from reacting to the air.
Or, maybe even the silicone.
Cause this Cesium is just so reactive with everything.
Okay,
let's pull some of this out.
Look at that.
That pretty nice gold color to it.
Let's just squeeze it onto the play button.
No, now under the liquid.
(chuckle)
Here's the second squirt of Cesium.
You can see the Cesium's already setting up a little bit so,
I kind of have to kind of work quick here.
That is a lot of Cesium.
And supposedly it's more valuable than gold.
Even though I produced this quantity
here for probably about $200,
not including my time of course.
Okay.
The top surface isn't quite flat.
I think I can just warm the whole thing up and
get it to all melt again.
So I've turned up the temperature and remelted the Cesium.
So now I'm gonna actually take this,
pair of scissors, I'm gonna scrape
at it a little bit.
So,
When I run this along, it seems to just kind of repel the blade.
(chuckle)
It doesn't actually like skim and form a shiny metal.
That's interesting.
In most metals, you can skim it off
but this just kind of,
I guess the surface tension relative to the oil is really high.
Okay, well,
at least I got it flat and
I've probably knocked out most of the bubbles of oil
Okay, so the Cesium has cooled off and solidified again.
And you know what,
I'm gonna brand this is a slab made by Cody's lab.
So, a Cody Slab.
(laughs)
Let's see,
C
o
b.
There we go.
Cody's Lab
(laughs)
Alright!
Now let's turn this slab of Cesium over,
and see,
if it turned out to be a good play button shape.
Okay,
so,
not as shiny as I'd like but,
there it is.
Play button made out of Cesium.
I just broke it.
Oh dear,
alright back into the oil.
Cesium: the metal that melts when you poke it.
(laughs)
Look at this
Dipping my finger into liquid Cesium
It's really not a problem because there's so much oil around here
It feels cold.
(chuckles)
There you go, that's a first.
So I have repaired it.
Let's see,
if I managed to make the other side any more shiny this time.
Hey,
I'd say that's better,
look at that.
Okay, let's keep this coated in oil.
I'm gonna transfer this over to a jar.
There it is.
So I weighed the jar before and after putting the play button
in and there is 84 grams of Cesium.
The worlds only youtube play button that is so reactive
it must be stored under low oxygen mineral oil.
(laughs)
Like, even baby oil will react with this thing.
But,
now we get to go throw in a lake!
Okay, here we go.
Cesium play button.
In 3,
2,
1!
(explosion)
There you go,
So there you have it, a huge chunk of Cesium going into a pond.
I think it's crazy just how fast the reaction happened but
the explosion wasn't the horrendously
powerful explosion that's usually portrayed.
Which, totally makes sense to me, because in chemistry,
reactive does not necessarily equal energetic.
You see the amount of energy you get back from
reacting a atom of Sodium with a
molecule of water is roughly the same as
you do when you react a huge atom of
Cesium with the same molecule of water.
I mean, Cesium does actually release a little bit more, but
it's not significantly more.
But what is significant is the fact that Cesium is a
very large heavy atom and so there's not
very many of them in a gram which means
my 80 gram sample of Cesium only had
about the same number of atoms and the
same energy release as about 10 grams of
Sodium, approximately the same amount of
Sodium that Grant Thompson and I flushed down a toilet.
The whole reactivity thing is just the
fact that the Cesium will react with
things at a much lower temperature
it requires a lower activation energy to
strip off electrons which means that Cesium will react with air,
violently at room temperature, whereas Sodium,
you'd have to raise its temperature by around
600 degrees to get the same kind of reaction.
So there's a little bit of a sheen on
the water from the mineral oil but
otherwise I think this pond is totally fine.
Cesium is not really all that toxic I mean it
is a little toxic but,
so is table salt
so, this pond will be fine that's really
a tiny amount of mineral oil.
So I hope you enjoyed leave you guys with a
high-speed video of Lithium mixed with Cesium
reacting with snow and I'll see you next time!