10 Mind Blowing Science Experiments

Today I've made a compilation of 10 really cool science experiments. Once you've checked them all out, let me know in the comments which is your favourite and why. If you sand down the outside of a drinks can like this, you can remove all the paint and expose the aluminium. Now, check this out. If I open up the can and thread a skewer through the ring pull, then lower it down into a tank of household drain cleaner, straight away we get these bubbles starting to form around the can. The chemicals inside the drain unblocker are actually eating away at the aluminium and dissolving it. And the process produces lots of bubbles of hydrogen gas. That's highly flammable, so you do need to be careful. I'm doing this outside with lots of ventilation. Then after about an hour, you can see the liquid starts to turn dark brown. You might think that the coke can has dissolved, allowing the coke to pour into the drain cleaner, but that isn't the case. Check this out. When I lift it out, you can see the can has completely disappeared, but the drink is still inside and holding its shape. So what is going on? Well, there's actually a plastic coating inside of the can. This helps to keep the drink fresh and stop it tasting metallic. So we've completely dissolved the can, but kept the plastic coating. Pretty cool, huh? I can tip the drink out into a glass. I'm certainly not going to be drinking this, but now you can really see the plastic liner. And you can do a similar experiment with an egg. I placed this chicken egg into a glass and poured over some clear vinegar. Almost straight away, small bubbles appear around the entire egg. The acid in the vinegar starts to react with the calcium carbonate eggshell. It's slowly dissolving it. These bubbles are actually carbon dioxide. And after about six hours, the shell had started to become soft. Check this out. I can start rubbing it away with my finger and it's also really slippery. And after 24 hours, the shell had completely dissolved, but the egg was held together with a very thin membrane, which was underneath the shell. And if you look carefully, maybe with this backlight, you can see the yolk inside. It's really squidgy and very delicate, but it's just about strong enough to bounce. But if you go too high... Have you ever wondered what happens if you add iron filings to slime? Well, I poured some on and worked it in to mix it all together. We've got this light gray slime now, but is it magnetic? I held this magnet over the top to find out. And look at that, it's attracting the slime. How cool is that? You've got to be quick, otherwise it sticks to the magnet. These neodymium magnets are really powerful. Just watch what happens when they get close to the slime. It kind of just swallows them up. Wow, that looks mad. I have speeded up some of this footage to make it quicker to watch, and you can get some really cool effects. Watch what happens here. The slime sort of jumps up and wraps itself around. If you're enjoying this video, please do consider liking and subscribing. It's great fun to play with, but I wouldn't recommend storing it. I put it in a jar to use on another day, and it all started going rusty and brown and disgusting. Now check out this cool experiment. I poured half a glass of Coca-Cola into a glass, and I'm topping it up with bleach. Straight away, it starts stripping out the color, and after just a few minutes, it's turned completely transparent. How on earth does that work? Just don't drink it and dispose of it carefully. Now check out this really fun motor, which you can make at home. All you need is an AA battery, circular magnets, and copper wire. So to make the motor, we attach the magnets to the base of the battery, then take a short length of the copper wire, fold it in half, then fold it back on itself like this. Next, we need to measure it alongside of the battery, and fold the wire over at the same length as the magnets. Then form a loop at each end so it looks like this. This loop will hug the magnets at the base, slide it over the battery, and balance it on top. And off it goes. Look at it spin. We've made our motor. You do need to make sure the copper is well balanced so it doesn't fall off. So the battery causes current in the wire, which interacts with the magnetic field from the magnets, and that's what causes the wire to spin. You can make them out of different sized batteries. Here I'm using a slightly larger battery, and here's one with a tiny button battery. Or try experimenting by making different shapes of wire. I really like this spiral design, and this counterbalance one too. Just remember, it does need to balance. Now check out this really cool cartesian diver. He sinks to the bottom, then floats back up to the top. To make a basic one, you can use a plastic pipette and a metal nut. Thread the nut over until it seats against the bulb at the top. Then cut the tube just below with some scissors. Fix it in place with a glue gun, then you can test it out in some water to make sure it floats. It should bob up and down nicely like this when you push it, but always return to the top. Now watch this. If you drop it into a full plastic bottle of water, screw the lid back on, and squeeze the bottle with your hands, it sinks all the way to the bottom. Release your hand, and it floats back up. By squeezing the bottle, you changed the pressure inside, and increased the air density inside the pipette. It's now denser than the water surrounding it, so it sinks to the bottom. And when you stop squeezing, we release the pressure, and the whole thing floats again. You can even make a diver out of a drinking straw. Cut it in half, and fold it over on itself like this. And I'm using a paper clip for a weight. Make sure it floats, and add it to the bottle. Or if you wanted to, you can use plasticine around a straw, and make your own diving figure. Give the bottle a squeeze, and because they're all made differently, they have different characteristics, so they behave slightly differently. Now check out what happens if I add some liquid gallium metal to an aluminium coke can. It becomes soft, and pretty much just disintegrated in my fingers. I could just tear it apart. This gallium metal is non-toxic, and it's got a low melting temperature, so I can melt it in a cup of warm water. Then you can transfer it into a syringe. But I wanted to see what would happen if I applied some to an aluminium tennis racket. I started by sanding some paint off at the throat, then added some gallium. After just a few minutes, it started weakening the aluminium, and the frame cracked. Then as the gallium absorbed further on up the aluminium, all of a sudden, this happened. The tension in the frame just ripped it apart. That's crazy. The metal is now soft, and it's lost all its strength. It easily just breaks apart. I can just crush it in my hands. Just that small amount of gallium has devastated this racket. Now check this out. If you've got a glass full of wine, and another one full of water, you can do a really cool trick. Take a thin plastic container, and cut out a piece which is completely flat, like this. Next, place it on top of the glass of water, and carefully hold the plastic onto the glass, and turn it upside down. Sit it on top of the wine glass, with the plastic still in between, and you can clean up any spills. Watch this. Hold the top glass, and slide back the plastic to make a really small opening, in between the two glasses. And straight away, you see the wine starting to transfer from the bottom glass, straight up to the top. Wine and water have different densities. So the heavier liquid, in this case the water, sinks to the bottom, while the lighter wine rises to the top. Pretty cool, huh? It takes about 10 minutes, and our glass of water has turned into wine. But next I'm going to show you how to make these really simple miniature rockets. And they're actually made out of a teabag. Start by taking a pair of scissors, and chop off the top. Then open it up, and empty out the contents. We're now left with a very thin tube, of lightweight filter paper. And that's it. Now, if we light the top of this, as the teabag burns, it creates a hot air current flowing upwards. And when it burns to the bottom, the convection current provides enough force to lift the ash, to make it take off. Pretty hot, huh? It definitely looks best if you do it against a black background. And they can go really high. Of course, you should only do it outside. Now check this out. It's a homemade spinning pop-pop boat. To make it, I used this waste piece of polystyrene. This is going to be the base of our boat. I placed a CD on top, and drew around it. Then used a craft knife to cut the circle out. And to make the engine, I'm going to use this copper pipe. It measures 3 16th of an inch in diameter, and it's generally used for automotive brake lines. I straightened it out, and used a pipe cutter to cut a piece about 38 centimeters long. Then I deburred the inside of the pipe on both ends. And now it's ready to shape. We need to make a loop right in the middle, like this. Then we need to mark two points opposite each other on our boat, about two centimeters from the edge. And use a screwdriver to pierce the holes straight through. Then bend the copper pipe so it lines up with the holes, and slides straight through. And that's a nice snug fit. Then finally, we need to bend the end of each of these tails at 90 degrees. Because it's quite a tight radius, it is difficult to do by hand. So I used some pliers. But you do need to be very careful not to crush or fold the pipe. And we need to bend the other tail 90 degrees, but in the opposite direction. And there we go. That's our finished pop-pop boat. First we need to make sure it floats correctly, and it's not off balance. This is looking really good. So now we need to prime the copper pipe engine. To do this, I'm taking a big sip of water, and holding it in my mouth. Then I used a drinking straw, to blow the water into one end of the copper pipe, until it comes out to the other end. The whole pipe is now full of water, so it's primed and ready to use. So turn it upside down quickly, and float it back on the water. And to heat our engine, I'm using a tea light candle. We place it underneath the loop here. Light it up, and because candles sometimes die down a little bit when you first light them, until they get going, I'm keeping the lighter underneath the loop, to help with the initial heating of the water in the copper pipe. Then all of a sudden, when it reaches boiling point, off it goes. Round it spins. The candle contains enough heat for it to continue spinning by itself, and it spins round surprisingly quickly. So what's happening here? The flame from the candle is actually causing the water in the bottom of the loop to boil. This creates a small amount of steam, which expands, and pushes water out through one end of the pipe, which in turn results in fresh water being sucked in through the other end of the pipe. This replenishes the loop, and the cycle continues. Constantly heating, and pushing water out through one side, and sucking fresh water in through the other. And in this case, the boat spins because of how we've angled the pipes. Now if you'd like to see how to do some really cool tricks, like these, which you can learn at home in just a few minutes, you can click on the link here to take a look at the video. Have fun, stay safe, and as always, thanks for watching.