You may, apparently, need me to tell you this, but please don't microwave aluminum
foil. You're watching What's Trending, I'm
Martine Beerman. Make sure to subscribe for more social media news daily. This
started out as a trend which came over from Japan. Twitter user Asu_Astell
showed people how he made a shiny ball of foil by hammering and sanding down
the edges. And others in Japan started making their own. We even did one of
those cool text on-screen videos for Facebook.
That is what you call a cross-
platform promotion. It was a nice, fun, and harmless trend, and then of course
some people had to go out there and make it dangerous. Why you gotta do that? A
couple of fake tweets used Asu_Astell's photo to make it seem like the shiny
ball could be made by putting a crumpled bunch of foil in the microwave. And then
a couple of additional tweets made people think that maybe some people were
actually gonna put balls of foil in the microwave. @1ndi3 tweeted: "Wow! I just
burnt my microwave because of this." He was joking.
Good, because I hope he has more sense than that. That photo he used appears to
come from a Japanese website about fire prevention. And this photo from DJWallie
Mayne also has been floating around the Internet for awhile. It looks like
they're all kind of part of the same April Fool's gag, so as far as we know, no
one's actually taken this seriously and microwaved foil. Good, because science. Oil
is a conductor, takes on heat, and gives out more heat, creates big boom. If
that helps. And if my description of that boom just
was not enough for you, we are kind of curious what does happen when you put
foil in a microwave, so this video from 2013 should have the answer.
Okay. I stand corrected. It doesn't completely explode, but still not good
for your microwave. You don't ever want to f*ck with radiation. That's all I'm saying. I like
get nervous to stick my hand into the microwave to pull my food out after I've
opened the door. And let me tell you, those people who just randomly open the
door before the beeps gone off... damn. I don't even know how you're still
existing at this point and are not just like a big green monster. So to sum that up, you
should avoid putting anything in there that you don't want to get really, really
hot. But if you have some extra time on your hands you can make a really cool
shiny ball. Japanese YouTuber SKYTomo detailed the process on his channel. It
involves forming the foil into a rough sphere, hammering it down for about two
hours to make it more exact, polishing it with sandpaper, and then using a liquid
abrasive to make it shiny. It's a relatively simple process. Asu_Astell
gave these instructions to BuzzFeed, and that link is in the description.
Seems like a fun use of tin foil when you're not making yourself an alien hat,
so I figured I'd give it a little whirl, so let's turn this puppy into a ball
shall we. Oh it's already big.
Yeah. All right. I don't have a hammer at all, so we're just gonna just put it in
there, just squish it down.
Okay. Don't have a hammer. I don't have any type of liquid that would make this
different like totally almost spherical. If this isn't fun for the whole family, I
don't know what is. In fact, there's a bunch of cool stuff you can do with
aluminum foil. YouTube channel Kiwami Japan made a working kitchen knife out
of aluminum foil, and you can probably do that at home as long as you're planning
on using it for kitchen stuff. And while we're on the topic, let's dish some
knowledge at you. Tin foil hasn't been made with tin since
World War II. After that, it was replaced with aluminum since that's cheaper and
more durable. And millions of people still call it tin foil and it's a losing
battle to try and correct them and to be really honest it's mostly because most
people can't say aluminum. And if you grew up in South Africa like me
we call it aluminium. I know. So different, right? And if you don't want to be called
out by your buds, you just call it tin foil. Don't say we never taught you
anything. Did we just save you from putting aluminum in your own microwave?
If so, let us know in the comments and for more trends head to whatstrending.com.