Hey guys
We're back today with another experiment that I'm personally excited about and been looking forward to for a couple of months
I went picked up a couple of bags of marbles from the Dollar store
And I'm bringing it back my mini Arc Furnace
because I'd like to bring the two together and see if we can get those marbles to melt
So you probably remember from a previous project,
We took a piece of refractory brick and cut it to form a mini Arc furnace. This thing's capable of withstanding temperatures over
3,000 degrees Fahrenheit and possibly even more. Now something that I haven't really played with yet
But I've seen popping up a lot in the comment is to make glass
But before I actually make glass I wanted to try melting it first just to make sure we had
capability. So the purpose of this experiment today is to take some of these glass marbles,
strike up a ripping hot electric arc powered by my homemade Arc welder, and bring the two together to see if we can actually get
electricity to melt glass.
Now some of you faithful long-term viewers will remember that the electrodes I use on its Arc furnace are
carbon rods that I pull out of Lantern batteries. And unfortunately I used my other ones up and threw them away,
so we're going to need to start this project by harvesting a new batch.
And there we have it guys. With that very simple lantern battery hack, we now have ourselves four black carbon electrodes
that should work perfectly for this mini Arc furnace.
Now we can pretty much put these up and use them as is. But the problem
is they've got this goopy stuff on the ends from where they're capped off at the top.
But I find the quickest and easiest way to clean this goop up
is simply to strike an arc and let it burn for about five seconds.
Just be careful not to breathe in the fumes because the smoke is toxic.
Alright guys, so our carbon electrodes are now prepped and ready. Everything is good to go so at this point
let's just take one of our white marbles place it down inside the furnace and strike an arc
just to see if we can actually get it to melt. And I think the chances of that happening are quite high. And I did
make a lid for my arc furnace so it can go on top and help contain the heat. However this first experiment
I'd actually like you to see the Arc.
So I'm going to leave the lid off, strike our Arc, and then turn it so that it
splashes downward over top of the marble. Let's watch what happens
oh
Wow ok, I'm going to stop it right there because that's only been ten seconds and I can already see that the glass is melting.
I'm gonna pull it out for you to can see.
Oh my goodness! That's ten seconds in the Arc furnace, guys! That is crazy!
This is kind of cool and very encouraging. Our marble is only in the arc furnace for 10 seconds
It melted in half and then when I went to grab it with my needlenose pliers it actually conformed to the shape of the pressure
So it's already moldable at ten seconds. Lets see what it will do in a minute
[buzzing sound of arc]
Okay, so I actually only went to 25 seconds and look at that. It is completely molten. That is crazy! And stick a screwdriver in there
Wow, that is Molten glass!
Liquefied glass in 25 seconds. Look at that! And it's still hot enough I can sculpt it around
Lets see if I can pull a little bit of that out
Ah, that's super cool
Well mini Arc furnace versus marbles apparently no problem at all. So for this next experiment
Let's grab five more marbles and see if we can melt them all together at the same time
Check that out! That has gone completely molten
Hahaha, those marbles are nothing, but a molten sea of glass right now, look at this
ohh gosh, that is cool
That is like Lava look at that look at that
It's like liquid glass putty. Except It's actually glass what?
It's starting to harden up here at the top. Look I can pull it. He form strands and fibers. Oh my
ah
Look at that. I made a nice long fiber there by pulling it
Well guys it seems to work pretty well
We just took down five marbles in less than a minute
And when I stuck my screwdriver in there and start pulling it out. You could see it was actually very
Liquidy like I could pull it up
I could stir it around. They kinda had the same viscosity as liquid chocolate or liquid silicone before I kieres up I also tried dipping
The tip of my screwdriver and pulling it up as high as I could get it they made this nice long strand of glass fiber
No where I'm going with this? That's right, this right here is a homemade piece of fiberglass now
It's only one piece you can see how flexible it is if you flick it with your finger
You can see it bounces up and down
It''s got a surprising amount of flexibility to it unlike a sheet of glass which would just crack if you try and bend it, so fiberglass seems to
have different properties than a sheet of glass, interesting! But one final experiment lets take a whole handful of these colored decorative marbles
and try melting them down. These are yellow, green, teal, little bit of purple in as well
It'll be interesting to see the result after they've been melted and mixed.. man that thing is full
And you know what I might do to conserve a little bit of energy is put the lid on this time and we can get
them to melt even faster
okay, i'm gonna pull them out
Wow, that's cool. When I take the lid off here so you see inside
oh that's beautiful
Looking at the lid here. You can see how toastie hot that got. I'd like to heat that from the top now to get it a little warmer
Oo I'm actually underneath the Molten glass. Can you see that?
oh wow that's cool
Cool, all right. Let's stop there and take a look
That's cooling down fast but there are pockets in there that are super hot. Look in there! Wow looking down inside, it was almost white hot there
Wow it just keep going and going
What! This stuff is amazing! Cools down very quickly, but it pulls like putty
Be good if i could break that tip off
Wow, that's crazy. It looks like some kind of a Lava pit Monster from the nether realm
And look how all the colors are blended together here to form this charcoal gray. It almost looks like a paint
Oh it's kinda smokey in here. Does glass burn? We did it guys we melted that whole handful of marbles within about a minute
Maybe a minute and a half
But it didn't take much at all. You can see when I tried pulling it out with the head of the screw driver, it made these
nice long glass strands which are very very brittle. But what I found was amazing about
This is it pulled almost like putty. If you were to stick a screwdriver in
Something like silly putty stretch it, it has about the same consistency
The difference is that after this sets, it's as hard as glass
Which is exactly what it is. It's also very sharp and very pointy. Now just for fun
I'm going to break down these shards, melt the glass one more time, and then take a glob of that molten material and just drip it
Into a glass of water just to see if we can get anything cool to happen
It shattered didn't it? A million pieces
Got it on the side of the glass. Oops I missed! I was trying to melt down some of this glass and drip it into the
Water but I actually missed and it dripped down the side of the glass instead
Which is hilarious because now it's actually fused with the glass and become part of it
That's crazy. It's also warmed up the water quite a bit as well. Oh
No, it just chips right off
I just knocked it off
But it looks like it was welded to the glass because the left a little pockmark there when it fell off
Alright guys bonus experiment since this arc furnace seems to be taking down glass without any problem at all
I thought it would be fun to try striking an arc and just running one electrode on the inside of the glass and the other on
The outside just to see how quickly it would melt the edge. So let's fire it up for one more experiment to see what happens
Arc furnace versus drinking glass, here we go
Wow
Look at that! That is crazy!
That was amazing. What I tried doing was holding one electrode
just on the edge of the glass itself and
Using the heat and the flame to kind of direct it down side, and what it did is it made almost like an improvised
plasma cutter for glass. You can see it took that thing no problem
Now as the thing is cooling it is cracking and spattering and spewing glass all over
We do have this really cool looking molten drop down the side here though. That was so much fun
I'm going to try it one more time on the opposite end then we can call it a day
So quick summary of what we did here today
We started off with the purpose of seeing if we could use high amperage electricity to melt glass
We took one single marble and exposed it to an electric Arc in the mini Arc furnace and found that not only did at melt
Glass but it melted it within seconds. So we threw in five more marbles and melted them in less than a minute
We threw a whole handful of colored marbles in there and melted them down to a bubbly liquid Lava type soup
We also found that if we suck the tip of the screwdriver in there and slowly pulled it out the glass acts like putty and
If we stretched out high enough and fast enough it would thin out into little strands of Fiberglass
We tried dripping a glob of Molten glass into a cup full of water
But it missed and landed on the side
Where it solidified and fused into the side wall. And when we removed it, it left a little crater behind
For our last experiment
We drew out one more juicy arc and tested it in the side of a common drinking glass
Where we found the electrodes almost form an improvised glass cutting
Plasma torch where the glass flows away like butters. These are very cool experiment and very satisfying to see the results
We now have the power to melt glass
Thanks for joining me for this video guys. I'll be looking for you in the next one. Talk to you then
Because now we have the power to melt glass