Awesome Experiments

Magnets have some very interesting physical properties. Magnetic Games previously showed us how they can make each other vibrate. They’re back with three more minutes of neodymium magnets interacting with each other’s fields. That separator machine that works like a paper cutter is a cool idea.

It’s pretty easy to toss something into a spinning fan and watch it get smashed. But how feasible is it to send an object flying through multiple fan blades and have it emerge from the other end? Leave it to the guys from How Ridiculous to find out.

A while back, the guys from How Ridiculous built a stupidly large hammer for smashing stuff. To kick off their latest round of hammer-induced carnage, they used it to drive a giant nail into the ground. Then they used it to screenprint a bunch of t-shirts, launch some baseballs, play a piano, and crack open an ATM.

Duct tape is an incredibly strong and versatile mending tool. But can it help objects stand up to the force of the mighty 150-ton hydraulic press? HPC wrapped some everyday items in thick layers of the sticky silver stuff to see if it improves its ability to survive the press?

Remember those grade school volcanoes we made from vinegar and baking soda? This mini volcano is a bit more dangerous. Play to DIY built the volcano from cardboard and string, then covered its exterior with crushed-up matchstick heads. Despite being submerged in an aquarium, it’s quite incendiary.

If you spin a fluid-filled vessel fast enough, you can get the liquid to form a vortex. Brick Technology wanted to see if they could produce such an effect using LEGO mechanisms, so they created a series of machines to experiment with fluid dynamics. The one at the end is impressively stable for how fast it spins.

Normally the only hole on a soap bubble is the one that you blow through to fill it with air. But science vlogger and teacher Steve Mould shows us how it’s easy to make a perfectly circular hole in a film of soap using a loop of thread. He goes on to explain how it’s a useful metaphor for the way cell membranes work.

Replicating the sun’s brightness indoors isn’t easy to achieve. But if anyone can pull it off, it’s the guys from Corridor Crew. Though this time out, they didn’t rely on computers and visual effects and instead loaded up the studio with an insane amount of lighting gear. We’re amazed they didn’t light their test subject on fire.

Over the years, vehicles have gotten heavier and heavier as cars pack more technology, safety, and a quieter ride. Just how little of a car could you get away with and still drive it? William Osman and his pals decided to test that out, starting with two ordinary cars which they gradually stripped down to their bare essentials.

Jake Laser wishes he could run as fast as Usain Bolt. But he’s never going to achieve that goal without some mechanical assistance. So he got to work figuring out the best way to increase his running speed through a series of experiments with jets, a windsurfing wing, low-friction shoe soles, and lots of practice.

Just like a real car, the tires on LEGO vehicle can make a huge impact on grip. LEGO expert Sariel built a motorized and weighted test rig to see how different official LEGO and third-party tires perform on different surfaces to figure out which ones are the best for traction. Place your bets now.

The Slow-Mo Guys do their best How Ridiculous impression by testing how many panes of glass they can shoot through with a single bullet. But it’s not that answer that’s the most interesting thing in this video; it’s the amazing high-speed footage of each bullet’s path and the destruction left in its wake.

You might think that those PVC pipe potato cannons were fairly innocuous, but they can deal out some serious damage if overpressurized or built with the wrong kind of pipe or glue. The Backyard Scientist performed a series of experiments to figure out just how dangerous they can be, and tests some supposed safety measures.

Magnetic fields can be pretty amazing. Given the right conditions, they can be turned into motors and even levitate. Magnetic Games shows off three different setups, each of which results in magnets floating and spinning with just a small boost of human or battery power.

Industrial waterjets can be strong enough to slice through metal. So the idea of sticking your hand into one seems like a terrible idea. That’s why the guys at the Waterjet Channel used ballistic gel dummy hands instead of human hands to see just how horrific the carnage of 60,000 PSI of H2O would be.

Mechanical gears can change the speed or force by using different sizes and spacing of their teeth. But we had no idea that a similar result could be achieved by spinning discs embedded with different quantities and sizes of magnets. Magnetic Games shows off this surprising behavior in this neat physics demonstration.

When you want to start a fire, it’s important that you have dry wood. Logs that have been sitting around and getting rained on are very difficult to keep lit. The Hydraulic Press Channel wanted to see if they could use mechanical force to extract enough water from damp timber that it would be dry enough to light.

If you heat up a penny with a blow torch then lower it over a puddle of acetone, the reaction with the vapors will make the penny glow like a dim red lightbulb. NileRed shows off the reaction and points out that it must be done with a copper penny and not one with zinc or it will melt. And remember, chemistry is dangerous.

There are countless videos on the Internet that claim to demonstrate machines that can generate their own energy and operate in perpetuity. Don’t believe the hype. In this video from The Action Lab, he shows off one such trick, which uses hidden electromagnets to make a sphere look like it’s spinning on its own.

The Backyard Scientist conducts another ill-advised and dangerous experiment by loading himself and a bucket of molten aluminum into a cherry picker, then ascending to 50 feet before pouring the metal into an aquarium on the ground. We’d like to say this was for science, but it’s clearly just for the spectacle.

A normal tennis racket has gut, nylon, or polyester strings. But what if you replaced those strings with razor blades and then fired the ball at the racket with a powerful air cannon at 500+ MPH? Tyler Bell demonstrates exactly that, dicing up tennis balls in a fraction of a second with his deadly looking rig.

James over at The Action Lab shows off a neat series of chemical reactions that make it look like he cut his hand, then miraculously heals it. The combination of ferric chloride and potassium thiocyanite produce the deep red blood color, while the addition of sodium fluoride makes it turn transparent again.

Tesla coils give us one of the few controlled ways to see electricity. Apparently, if you stick a nail into a plastic syringe, point it at a live tesla coil, and pull its plunger that it would extract the electric plasma into its barrel. Original footage from ElectroBOOM.