Awesome Experiments

The Hydraulic Press Channel previously tested the strength of LEGO bricks. Now they’re here to do the same, but with the actual construction material used to hold up real world structures. Both red solid clay bricks and concrete blocks are able to withstand an extreme amount of pressure before failing spectacularly.

The Slow Mo Guys performed a dangerous experiment, in which they tossed a flaming bucket of gasoline onto a sheet of glass to see how it spread. The resulting 4K visuals are spectacular, but under no circumstances should you try to replicate this at home.

Aerogel has some amazing properties. It’s insanely lightweight, and is an incredible insulator. Recently, Derek Muller of Veritasium put this to the test, by standing behind a blanket infused with silica aerogel being hit by a Boring Company Not a Flamethrower. Now we’d like to see the same test with a serious flamethrower.

Macrophotography experts Beauty of Science captured incredible close-up footage of the interactions between water, ice, vinegar, and other substances to demonstrate endothermic processes in front of a high-resolution thermal camera. If you haven’t seen Getting Hot, it’s worth a watch too.

“It’s like a cross between silver and milk.” Gallium is a pretty amazing element, a shiny metal that melts above 85.57ºF. The Slow Mo Guys decided to play with some of the stuff in front of their high-speed camera, capturing some amazing footage of the metal’s properties when in motion.

Magnet enthusiast Magnetic Games decided to see what would happen when he introduced a bunch of his small, Buckyballs-style spheres to some of his incredibly powerful neodymium monolith magnets. The impacts are quite spectacular, and especially neat to watch in slow motion.

That expanding spray foam insulation can be really useful for filling gaps and cracks, but it’s also really nasty stuff. The King of Random decided to see if they could use a bunch of cans of Great Stuff to make usable (and really ugly) furniture. Somebody should try and build a house out of this goo.

The guys at MEL Science show off a visually impressive, but simple to execute experiment about fluid density and immiscibility. You too can make it rain colorful droplets inside of a glass with some water, vegetable oil, and food coloring. Detailed instructions here.

The idea of filling a swimming pool with gelatin seems simple enough, but as engineer Mark Rober explains, it’s way more complicated than you might think. Leave it to a rocket scientist to figure out how to boil and then refrigerate an entire pool filled with 15 tons of Jello.

One of the more entertaining science experiments involves slapping neodymium magnets on a AA battery, and placing it into an length of copper wire. Mr. Michal plays with the idea, using a loop of wire to see how long batteries last, then drag races them to see which is most energetic.

Steel wool is really useful for scrubbing and cleaning. But it’s also incredibly flammable. The guys from The King of Random decided to play with fire, and see how it might react if a lit piece of the shredded metal was dropped into a cup of styrofoam filled with liquid oxygen.

The Backyard Scientist doesn’t have a volcano around his house, but still wanted to play around with some molten lava. So he got to simulating the stuff by melting down some lava rock and then poured it into his parent’s swimming pool to see how it would behave.

The Hydraulic Press Channel uses its powerful machine to conduct an interesting scientific experiment. They loaded it up with both aluminum alloy and steel car wheels to see which type is stronger, and how they behaved under extreme forces.

The Backyard Scientist is back with his latest build – a ridiculous microwave oven, cobbled together from the magnetrons from multiple ovens. He even tried microwaving a microwave with it. We’re just going to say this is a really bad idea.

Engineer and inventor Mark Rober recently lost his wallet, and he never got it back. But was that an isolated incident, or are there still honest people in America’s cities? Mark decided to find out by dropping 200 wallets in 20 cities to see to gather some data on human behavior.

This super-fine steel wool reminds us of Donald Trump’s hair. But these skinny metal strands are most interesting when they have their electrons excited by a microwave oven. Steve Mould explains why it behaves so spectactularly. The 9-volt battery trick is pretty neat too.

When they’re not crushing things with their hydraulic press, Lauri and Anni are fooling around in the snowy countryside of Finland. This week, they managed to create a single-person hot tub made entirely from ice. The color of that hot water is more than a bit sketchy.

Theoretically, the reason that whipped cream is thick is because of the air in it. So if you put it in a vacuum chamber and remove all the air, does it go back to the way it was? The King of Random sucks as hard as they can to answer the question none of us was asking.

After creating a mix of chilled acetone and water that was both slushy and flammable, The King of Random tried to make fiery snowballs using a similar technique. After a few false starts, he succeeded with gasoline-soaked snowballs. Kids, don’t try this at home.

A while back, The Backyard Scientist built a massive mousetrap and used it to smash things. He decided to take all of the energy stored up in that giant spring and use it to drive an axle. Unfortunately, it seems as if its power should be measured in mousepower, not horsepower.

Schlieren imaging is a method of visualization which plays with light refraction to capture images of normally invisible fluid patterns like air movement. Here, Veritasium walks us through a variant which uses colored filters to produce some astounding images.

Kyle Hill from Nerdist recently posted a brief clip that shows the crazy stuff that happens when you inject compressed air into a bed filled with sand. We spotted this 2012 video from The Royal Institution that shows much more, and provides an explanation of the physics at work.

While most aluminum is covered with a protective oxide layer, it’s possible that it could wear away over time. After watching NileRed’s clip showing how mercury can interact with exposed aluminum, we’re more than happy with it being banned from air travel.