This channel is dedicated to experimentation and constructing everything from cast aluminum slingshots to dazzling pyrotechnic mixtures. If you have questions, comments, or anything else, I'd love to hear them and will reply as soon as possible!
@The Plutonium Bunny This is great. My son's and I are wanting to do this or similar for manganese for a periodic table. I am wondering if there is a further stage you could do to clean up your manganese blobs?
Dang. An hour to heat a soupcan sized crucible of aluminum? Guess thats the price of propane. Made one with random pipes and odds and ends for free thatll melt a few lbs of aluminum in ~10-15 minutes from a room temperature cold foundry😂 i thought THAT was slow and inneficient. The temp control would be super nice to have though. Instead of 'no heat/ALL the heat'
I'm quite sure in the first half of the 1960's, I think it was Mechanix Illustrated that had an article for making a carbon arc. You took the carbon rods of D size batteries - so far, so good. But then used LINE VOLTAGE directly using an iron (like for ironing clothes) as ballast. So, you rigged one wire from the wall outlet to one prong of the iron's plug. From the other prong to one of the electrodes. And from the other electrode back to the wall outlet. I followed the article's instruction as perhaps a 13 year old using as a work bench the kitchen stove in our small kitchen in our small apartment. It worked just fine. Really bright. NOT very safe.
Good idea but if you have to add each coin at a time what's the difference of just dropping it in the try yourself, the hard part is to do a handful at a time. F.irst A.ttempt I.nformation L.earned❤️🙏🎉
In 2024, you can just 3d printed and take a photo of the key without "key was cast using a two part mold", "key was cast in zinc metal". Good video for archive though.
Manganese is super dense, so a ton of manganese metal could be hiding in a very small volume and may also be mixed in with the slag. That’s probably where your yield went.
I'm not going to criticize your safety equipment, it's your body your choice, but I WILL state the obvious that your equipment has the potential to INSTANTLY KILL you, drop dead in a fraction of a second if a mistake is made, and you should place a warning of such at the start of the video. Imagine if somebody tried this without gloves. People are dumb, and you don't want to be responsible if some back yard scientist turns his innards into steam and dies. Just saying.
Are you sure that the wire is nichrome? According to the Wirecutter’s collaboration with Ohio State University, modern toasters do not use nickel on their heating elements to save money. This makes the heating elements brittle and causes failures such as the one you experienced.
I think so - some experiments I did a while ago with currency made of pure Ni grew small crystals on the coin surface, so I should think that with proper parameters growing larger crystals would be very possible.
Great project! The 100 degrees issue, have you check the type of thermokoppel is right configured in the controller (K,J, S etc) evenso the DIN or ANSI norm. Do you have used the right compensation cable in agreement with the used thermocouple type. You can easily check the the 0 and 100 points for linearity due to freezing and boiling points of water. Think also about the aging of the element. Long term used K elements will have an error and must be replaced. Succes with your projects!
I have the same welder but mine has a light switch for the on off switch. Last thing I welded with it is a home made auger for post hole drilling. Seriously get some shade safety glasses youre not supposed to stare at stuff that hot because it sun burns your eye balls.
I dont like the kiln brick recipe. The good recipe is Mullite/ball clay/ talc then filler like styrofoam pellets to create burn out material to make air pockets to provide insulated brick property. Here the insulated brick property is the perlite. But you need a kiln to make a kiln since you need to fire those bricks at cone 10. I bet the more people that know you can make those bricks the cheaper they get from China tho.
This is a bit too much effort when you can do it with steel wool. I can even source iron oxide from junkyards. I know a lot of people who have cars sitting around with rusted parts and they don't mind letting those go.
@ThePlutoniumBunny Wow, I can't find any way to contact you. The contact form on your blog is broken. I just wanted to know where to source the xenon tubes from your Experiment 40 on your blog.
Hmmm, interesting - the contact form worked when I tried it yesterday. Anyhow, the Xe tubes were all from camera flashes. Especially disposable cameras - those have the small tubes. Sometimes you can ask stores like CVS or Walgreens for the disposable cameras people have turned in to have the film processed and they will let you have them for free. I believe the larger Xe tube was from an older camera.
When I was very young kid I made a centrifuge inspired by how Watson and Crick extracted DNA from protoplasm but today to extract halogenated uranium gas isotopes requires journal fluidic bearings or even HeIikon vortex.
