So when a YouTuber reaches 100,000 subscribers, YouTube sends them a silver Play Button as
an award, congratulations of sorts.
But recently, YouTube started sending out a different style of Play Button.
Is it made out of the same material?
Is it made out of a cheaper material?
Let’s find out.
[Intro]
So there are a couple of differences that we can see right off the bat.
This one is the one I got about a year and a half ago, right here for JerryRigEverything.
It’s a little bit smaller than this recent one.
This one’s for the What’s Inside Family, and Dan, why does yours have a hole cut out
of the center of it?
[Dan] We already cut one in half for our main channel and I thought how cool would it be
to take the “play” out of the YouTube Play Button.
So they don’t come like this with the triangle out of the middle.
But we took the “play” out of it.
[Zack] And I’m glad you did that because that’s the actual sample that we’re going
to use inside of this electron microscope.
So if you look at this microscope, the inside chamber right here that we put the samples
into, isn’t super huge.
So it’s nice when you have a really small sample; you get a better analysis.
We’ve already done an elemental analysis of the original silver Play Button.
And we realized that there is no silver inside of it.
It’s mostly Nickel.
I think it’s 94% nickel.
But now that we have this Play Button, it looks like the interior is made out of something
different…something besides nickel.
And that’s what we’re here to find out.
Another difference is that this award part right here is written on the glass itself,
and for the What’s Inside Family channel, nothing is written on the glass.
It’s all printed on the paper inside, which is probably more cost effective.
So what do you think Dan?
Do you think they changed the size, the frame, and the material to be more cost effective?
[Dan] I would imagine there are a lot more YouTubers that are hitting a million and of
course hitting 100,000.
I mean, this is our second channel that we’ve hit it with.
And so I’m curious to see, because we brought our gold Button and our silver Play Button
up here and we were able to see…that machine told us what this was made of.
But, I want to see what this new one’s made of.
I think it’s going to be different.
[Dan] Look at the back of that.
[Zack] Look at that!
[Dan] It’s different.
Where’s the other one?
Oh, you haven’t taken it off yet.
[Zack] It’s made in the USA at least, that’s cool.
[Dan] Yeah, at least they put that on there.
[Zack] It’s really a lot more light weight than I thought it would be.
[Dan] Alright, let’s check them out.
Side by side.
Look at the difference.
What about the backside?
[Zack] Mine looks a little bit cleaner and more polished.
Yours is like industrial.
[Dan] Yeah.
[Zack] You can see the injection points from the mold that they use to inject it.
[Zack] The chunk of the silver Play Button that we have in this cup is sitting in acetone.
So if it was plastic, it would have already been dissolved.
Luckily it looks like it’s still in one piece so we know for sure it’s not plastic.
But we got to find out what it’s really made of.
Alright so this is the electron microscope.
Inside of the electron microscope is where we’re going to stick this sample; the inside
of the silver Play Button.
Just going to rest it right there on top of that little platform.
And here inside of the machine, this is a view that not very many people get to see.
It’s this little platform right here and there’s a series of little motors and pulleys
and this moves the platform inside so that it can sit underneath this little nozzle and
that’s where we get our images from.
So this whole machine right here costs about 700,000 dollars.
The part that we’re the most interested in though is this part right back here.
This is the energy dispersive x-ray spectrometer, and it spits out x-rays into here to figure
out what the elemental makeup is of whatever sample we have inside.
The electron microscope is able to differentiate different elements on an elemental level simply
by putting the sample inside this machine.
And that will tell us exactly what the silver Play Button is made of.
So if you listen very closely there’s a high pitched sound and right now it’s pulling
all of the oxygen, all of the air, out from inside of this machine.
Cuz as you know, oxygen and all of the other molecules inside of the air have their own
elemental make up, and so we have to have zero air inside of the machine to get an accurate
reading on the Play Button itself.
So there are several cameras inside of this electron microscope.
If you remember seeing those motors and pulleys, it’s moving the platform underneath the
electron beam.
We can also raise the sample up and lower it with that same platform.
So this is a live camera inside the machine.
So the sample’s being read inside of the machine.
If you remember when we put it down inside of the platform, the shiny side was facing
up, and so with that shiny side, this is the elemental reading that we’re getting from
it.
Right here it says that it’s 92% nickel and there’s a little bit of zinc and a little
bit of carbon.
The carbon is kind of like the impurities and stuff.
You’re going to have that with any sample.
So we can pretty much safely assume that we’re looking at 92% nickel and 2% zinc for that
surface area.
So now we’re going to depressurize this machine.
We’re going to let air back into it, take the sample out and flip it up on its side
and go for a second reading of the internal of the Play Button.
So right now we’re still doing the cross section and so right here we can see the internal
section of the Play Button, and then this band right here, this layer, that’s the
shiny part, the exterior.
Here’s another little shot of that.
And so we know that this part does have the nickel in it, but now we want to see what
the actual center of the button is made up of.
[Dan] So I think this is super interesting because the other Play Button was all pure
nickel; the same thing on the inside of it.
Where this one, the scientist that we’re working with here does not want to be on camera,
which is fine, she coined this as the inside junk.
So even she used, by using the term “junk”, carbon is basically denoting that it might
be a little cost effective and material that’s not as pure as what was on the other one.
I thought that was interesting.
[Zack] So here’s the cross section that we’re looking at here.
And then once we get into this image, you can see that this is the cross section.
This is what the microscope is actually looking at.
And this is the elemental make up of each of the elements in that cross section.
So zinc is right here which is the majority of the cross section, but as we get close
to the edge here, we see that that’s where the nickel is at.
And this color is representing the nickel.
We have a little bit of copper and I’m guess that copper is used to join the nickel to
the zinc.
There’s also a little bit of aluminum, but we can see here that it’s only 4%, so that’s
pretty much a non issue here.
The majority of it is going to be the zinc and the carbon.
And we have the zinc and the carbon.
So the carbon is mixed pretty well inside of that.
Which I think is pretty interesting because when you take carbon and you add it to iron
you get steel.
And that carbon is used to strengthen the iron to make the harder material which you
get is steel.
So I’m guessing what they’ve done here with this Button is they’ve added the carbon
to the zinc to make it stronger and the Play Button will last longer that way.
But carbon is also extremely cheap and so is zinc.
So let’s see how much each of these Play Buttons weigh, the silver one from before,
and the newer silver one, and then we can kind of get an idea of how much each of them
cost to actually make.
Alright, let’s go weigh these things.
[Dan] Hold on, before we weigh things Zack, make sure you put this one.
[Zack] I’m not putting those on!
[Zack] Here is my silver Play Button.
This is the original one.
We’re going to go ahead and drop it onto the scale, and it looks like we’re at one
third of a pound.
Point three pounds.
And add on the What’s Inside Family channel, we’re at point three eight, plus…right
on point four one.
So it’s a little bit heavier.
So to recap, this is my Play Button; this is the What’s Inside Family Play Button.
Mine is made out of nickel which is about 5 dollars per pound if you’re just doing
like the raw weight of the metal.
This one is made out of zinc and carbon, which ends up being about 25 cents per pound, just
the raw metal weight.
[Dan] To put that into perspective, last year alone there were 24,000 people that hit 100,000
subscribers.
So not everybody redeems their award, but if they did, YouTube would be saving around
32,000 dollars a year at that same rate just by making this button over that button.
So while mine is bigger, it’s not as expensive as this one.
A dollar sixty is what we mapped that out to, and about 25 cents.
Not very expensive considering how much this means to every YouTuber that actually hits
the award.
But by making this Button less expensive, they are saving around 32,000 dollars a year
according to our estimates.
[Zack] And remember, those numbers are just for the metal weight itself.
We’re not talking about like the manufacturing cost, cuz like this Button, where it’s finished
on both the front and the back, like it’s shiny nice and finished.
This Button is not finished at all on the back; it has that raw, industrial feel to
it which actually saves a lot of money.
If we look really closely on the back, you can see the actual injection points for the
mold.
So they didn’t bother to finish that at all, which makes sense because no one’s
ever going to see the back of the Play Button besides us.
[Dan] Except for us weirdoes!
[Zack] We’re the only two channels that are going to open these things up.
[Dan] One thing I really like according to Social Blade, there were 25 channels a day
in 2015 that would hit 100,000 subscribers.
And in 2016, that was 44 channels a day.
So almost doubling that number, and so every single year you’re seeing more and more
people that are becoming subscribers on YouTube, that are gaining subscribers.
[Zack] Even though YouTube can now make probably about 5 or 6 Play Buttons for the cost of
one of these, it’s still…the most important part is that they actually are giving away
an award for hitting a milestone.
I think they are the only social media platform that actually rewards their creators when
they hit these milestones.
[Dan] And I am so grateful for it.
Like we took our gold Play Button around the world, like we really are grateful for the
award.
It sits prominently in our office.
We’re really proud of the achievement and really thankful for all of our subscribers
that actually choose to subscribe.
Like 100,000 or a million…those are a lot of people who subscribe.
And I’m certainly grateful for it.
Like it’s more than the metal that’s inside of it, it really is the subscribers like you
guys, for subscribing to our channels.
It means so much.
[Zack] I’m never going to melt it down because I love my award as well.
[Dan] I know a lot of you guys said if you’ve watched What’s Inside even one time, you’re
looking at this going Dan, how did you cut that so perfectly?
It wasn’t me I promise.
But it was really interesting the way that we cut it.
[Zack] Dan is not an expert with tools, but if you want to watch the video where he cuts
this open, I will link that at the end of this one.
And I do appreciate you guys a ton.
If you haven’t subscribed to my channel yet, go ahead and hit that subscribe button
below.
I will link Dan’s channel at the end of this one as well.
Thanks a ton for watching!
I’ll see you around.