Will Gauge Blocks Wring Together In a Vacuum Chamber? 

I have a lot of experience working with gauge blocks in a calibration lab. We had different sets of block gauge of different "class". The class defines how perfect the gauge is, and the perfection is measured in terms of the tolerance regarding it's nominal length, but also in the flatness and roughness of the faces. The best gauges has a parallelism + flatness error combined of 0.05 microns, that is 50 nanometers. That's insane. While that is still a few orders of magnitude bigger than the Fe atom, I suppose it has to allow for millions of atom pairs between the 2 blocks to be in very close proximity. What I found is that, when clean of oil, the better blocks have better better adhesion (and sometimes much better, to the point of really struggling to take them apart, the only way was to use another block to push one of them out by sliding sideways). How much of that is because of just better vacuum and how much is because of more atom pairs being in closer contact, I don't know.

I just learned about "Gauge Block Wringing" 5 minutes before finding this video, and I must say that I'm completely fascinated by this phenomena.

I would love to see this scaled up to mult-Kg sized items. Would be interesting to push it. Cool viddy.

I'm a machinist and when I was working in aerospace we used these a lot as standards for our measuring instruments. When we had time to talk to eachother, we would sometimes argue for hours about what it was that kept them together. Some would say vacuum and some would say surface tension. Nice to see someone has solved it.

I was always amazed how gauge blocks stick so well. Thank you action lab for answering our silly doubts. 😅.

These are the types of science projects that I love the most! Simple, yet interesting concepts that are experimented with scientific method, giving us a chance to learn and have fun in the same time.

Those blocks just remind me about my old erasers meltdown under hot weather and sticking to everything around it

As i was throwing away some packaging the other day i was wondering what polystyrene looks like in a vacuum chamber.

Yes, all 4 forces : air pressure, oil surface tension, atomic forces ( = coulomb- and, van der Waals forces) and..... the Cassimir Effect.

56 years old, and this is the first I am hearing of this! The world is just incredible.

Could you redo the experiment and attach a gauge + spring resistance to measure the force contribution of each factor? Thanks

someone: actually ask me whether its air pressure, surface tension or the atomic forces keeping gauge blocks together me: yes

I love how there's so many things that just keep two smooth pieces of metal together.

Dang Non magnetic pieces of metal sticking to each other with a lot of force This is genuinely really interesting

I love this. I asked this same question like 11 years ago when I was in vo-tech for tool and die and I couldn't get a decent enough answer. I still wondered because it was so odd to me. Not only there was an ideas of how, there was visual representations of them.

So is it, air pressure, surface tention of oil or atimoc forces? TheActionLab: yes

My brother worked for an optics company and he had two pieces of glass which were so smooth they were PERMENANTLY bonded by "wringing" them together in a bucket of soapy water.

3:06 a whole new level of controlling things in a vacuum chamber and we can use this to do magic tricks. 😆🤣 lol

Amazing work young man. I enjoyed your presentation as well as explanation in a manner that is easy to understand.

Great experiment! Cold welding uses the formation of molecular bonds between metal surfaces in a vacuum.

I just started a machinery course and we were shown gauge block wringing and I was intrigued. I assumed number 3 was the reason for the bond since the teacher said these ones were in bad shape and needed to be cleaned and polished as there were some near permanent fingerprints on them. Number 3 makes the most sense to me because we know that in a true vacuum with absolutely zero oxygen like metals can contact weld. So this wringing effect as I am making sense of it in my head is like a super small scale velcro between the molecules of the blocks.

He is not like other experimenters who just break and blow things. I love his videos based on very unique concept ❤️

I absolutely love your videos. They serve not just as entertaining and educational for me, but my daughter as well. Every one of your experiments that I can afford to do, and is safe, I do with my daughter... I even do some of the less safe ones, with her observing from a point of safety behind a shield. I love how it makes her ask questions, some of which I had never thought of and didn't know the answers to. From an 8-year-old girl and her dad... thank you. You are the Bill Nye of this generation.

The most important factor with the holding force is the quality of the contact surface finish. My practical experience: better finished blocks hold sufficient well without oil, less good finshed need oil! And this does not mean that the less good finished blocks are out of specs!!!

very good explanation, thank you for covering almost every topic i find interesting and what im curious about, you're literally the guy who covers almost every interesting "science" thing, thats funny because when i search about "science" thing i always encounter your channel XD, anyways thank you! (again)

Hilarious i asked this question on Quora just like a couple months ago. Was wringing to do with air pressure or something else and no answer really was at all sure. This is such great timing. Very very cool to see...

I love how this channel has no annoying ads in between the videos.

Well done. Deep research on the subject, good experiments to back it up and good conclusion. I wonder why there aren't vacuum and the right temperature.

Action lab and vacuum chamber goes hand in hand!

Thank you for answering this question.

Sixty Symbols has a vid on this but you demonstrated things in a new way and covered things they didn't. Great vid.

Nice experiment , you can measure the contact resistance between them with a milliohmetre if the tow metal touches each other, and if they are separated by a thin oil film they will act as a capacitor.

Love your channels!

This is a very nice and tempting channel for science geeks(as well as non-science coz they do develop interest) . I love the videos👍🏻

Always wanted to get some gage blocks to try this experiment.

Cool Experiment!

it'd be awesome to have this guy as a physics professor

I was about to ask you to do a Cold Welding experiment, which is similar, but not the same effect. After doing a quick search I found you already did that. :-) Way to go! Keep it up!

Thanks for this! I oftentimes used kerosene and meticulous cleaning to wring them together but they never STUCK so strongly as shown here. Seems the company I worked at had little actual skill about this important aspect of the work we did!

this guy and the other science Chanel’s teach me more than my science teacher

Anyone else remembers Veritasium's "Why Metals Spontaneously Fuse Together In Space" video from 2016?

The wringing definitely works best with new and clean gauge blocks. When they are old and all scratched up, they won't wring anymore.

Super good video, thanks

If youtube and this guy would have existed back in 2005 I would’ve been a great scientist for sure. But I still watch every video and it fascinates com enlightens me every single time.

Just learned about cold welding in a vacuum. Would be a cool experiment to do in the vacuum chamber if it hasn't been done here yet.

Wringing gauge blocks is super satisfying

Never heard of gauge blocks before. I learned something. Lol

Action lab I love yr short vids over there you act like a mad scientist lol

Amazing. I’d never heard of this effect.

It would be interesting to measure how much force is needed to separate them in each condition, to see if oil is stronger, or air, or bonds.

Always turning up something interesting AF

Every time I come back I wish I never left but at least I've got a couple days of content to explore!

I thought they would be welded to each other in the vacuum

Love the videos, keep 'em coming. Btw, was the box of gloves as expensive as the gauge blocks? Lol. Here in 2021?

Pls conduct double slit experiment in vacuum. Really nice videos.

I worked at a double disc grinding shop and we basically specialized in making parts flat. I would be done with some small rectangles or even really precise parallels i would be able to slap em together and they would stick to each other. Also did steel plates and when placed on a precision granite it would be impossible to lift it off the granite. Compressed air would be needed to walk the parts off the granite table.

Nice experiment. But I suggest tou to try cleaning the oil with some strong solvent, like acetone, and manipulate the blocks with gloves. You probably see a much stronger effect from the solid-solid adhesive forces.

Thanx...TIL wringing...Before opening this AL notification, I thought perhaps "Wringing" meant "Ringing", as when the sound waves distributes thru the srrounding medium (air or lack therof) when two or more hard metals are impacted by each other.

Thank you. You just resolved an argument that me an my husband had on this subject a few years ago. He thought it was air pressure only and I said, "if it still works in a vacuum, then you are wrong." He is wrong. I should have bet him 100 bucks. LOL

I'd like to see this with other materials,.and also dissimilar metals for each block

Awesome video.

Van Der Waals force for the win. People can’t quite believe it is a real thing. Lots of students come through and still can’t get the concept of it. See what happens in vacuum when you scrape the oxidized layer off of that material. Cold welding is a real thing!

Cold welds....learned that in the early days in space sending metals without rubber or plastic joints would cause a bond so they couldn't open up antenna solarpanels....etc

I've seen stainless steel cold weld to itself. It's something I have to watch out for in my industry. Stainless isn't always the best option and sometimes a bit of oil makes all the difference.

The fact that they can machine those to a tolerance of nanometers is insane. That sounds about like the tungsten pointers you see under an electron microscope.

You could tether the bottom block to the chamber and then use a force gauge attached to the other to measure the strength of the attraction in each case as you pull them apart and get some quantitative data.

I think it's oil viscosity. Any minute traces of oil will create a layer in between. If you want to move them apart, the layer needs to get thicker first, so oil from the edges must flow to the middle. But since the layer is so incredibly thin and the oil viscous, it requires a lot of force to flow. I think they are basically glued together with oil.

how do you get all the interesting experiment ideas? it is like daily dose of internet but with science and every video is selfmade.

I believe wiping with paper towel doesn't remove oil, it just thins the layer. In this case we are dealing with microscopic phenomena so even the thinned layer of oil can be sufficient to have an effect. To remove oil you need to use a solvent (e. g. acetone or paint thinner), a surfactant (dish soap) or alkali. Removing oil is a demanding process which is done before painting parts.

Still is very fascinating!

this is fascinating

I think it's love that keeps them together

I’m so chuffed ,…..I actually got a third of this right 🥳🥳😊

What about the Casimir effect? This might explain some of the attraction. At 10 nm of separation, conductive surfaces will exert about 14 psi or 100 kPa or 1 atmosphere of pressure against each other. I think the video said there was more space between the blocks than that, due to the oil, but there'd be some Casimir force.

There's also ZPE (The Casimir Effect) and Cold Welding (especially problematic among Stainless Steels)!

Iirc a good rule of thumb is the distance between two guage block sides "wrung together" is one millionth of an inch. That's like 25.4 nanometers. Atoms vary in " size" from ~0.27nm-0.037nm so it would seem like a few atom could fit in between them. It might be a tight fit for some molecules in the air. So I'd guess the vacuum won't affect them. I remember once two flat surfaces get a certain distance or less most em radiation can't fit thru the crack. That creates an imbalance between the area outside the small area between. That seems almost like an em version of a vacuum. I forget what the effect is named. I think that would be what holds them together and maybe the two sides being worked till they both fit each as if each side had a bunch of tiny pins which slide between the bunches if tiny pins on the other side thus having twice the number if tiny pins in the same area which puts horizontal pressure on all the pins making them "stick."

I did that experiment during my metrology class at Dawson College back in 2007.

I would like to see a video explaining how a capstan assist works

You previously did a video on cold welding in a vacuum, could you discuss the possibilities with these, if it’s even possible because they are too smooth?

This actually makes me think of blocking we have at work when we make packaging materials from HDPE .. due to the cooling temperature of the HDPE after the extrusion the layers end up sticking together (there is inner blocking where the inside of the packing material sticks together and outside blocking where the outside of the packing material sticks when coiled) , think the same thing is happening with the gauge blocks .. heat is conducted into the blocks making them expand on a microscopic scale and when you press both together and release they cool rapidly and shrink causing them to stick.

An old scratched up rusty set I found at a garage sale only sticks through one mechanism. Glue!

Cleaning them with a paper towel is kinda a wimpy method. You could ultrasonic clean them with a degreaser. Metal is porous and can hold oil. You could also try heating the residual oil off after the wipe down. Or try is with ceramic block.

about the electrons holding on to each other... there is a thing you can try its called a cold weld.... happend in our toolshop once when a guy left the blocks stuck and put them away next time we used them they where stuck so we couldnt get them appart without breaking them...😉😉😉😉😉

Yaaaay for learning something new 🤓,, didn't even know that phenomenon had a name 👍

This was great!

A video on second law of thermodynamics with Enthalpy entropy and free energy

I think it would be interesting to repeat the test with ceramic gauge blocks, they're usually a much higher quality than your "standard" accuracy gauge block (which says a lot, steel GBs are insanely accurate already) and it kind of eliminates the molecular attraction/cold welding theory of steel since ceramic can't cold weld. They're pretty expensive so I wouldn't recommend getting a set but you could buy two single blocks for a much lower price.

Thx for another vids

Proud to know what these were before watching the video :D

Thumbed up on the wring film

Ever heard of cold welding in space? Have one for you, create a vacuum and leave the blocks together, the last effect you mentioned will actually WELD those together (remove the oil first though)

The force between atoms is actually very strong. In fact, if the both sides were smooth on an atomic level, and there were no oxide/oil layer between the 2 sides...the blocks would weld together permanently. You can imagine having a single block of metal, with an imaginary line through the middle of it and pretend that it was 2 pieces of metal touching each other at the imaginary line. The strength at which the sides pull together is as strong as the metal is in the block.

Two, different flat metal peices, like (iron and gold), will have atoms from the other metal when held together like this. So cool. Atoms are jiggly.

Very good video sir

You can get quartz discs which are even more flat than steel. Do they have this attraction? In other words are they held together in the atmosphere like guage blocks. If so, what about in a vacuum. I would suggest similar experiments with quartz discs and see if they attract each other. If they do try quartz and a stainless gauge block. The two certainly have different spacings of the atoms on the surface, silicon dioxide versus nickel/iron. I believe I have played with some quartz slides that they seem to be sticky. Shipped with tissue paper between each slide.

Lmao some parts of this audio sounds a little dirty if you aren’t watching the video and only start listening at certain times.

when u just discovered that u want all type of elements on that format block, collect em all.

I love this videos

Does it also work if the two blocks are made from a different metal ?

@ 0:29 this is in relation to their conjugate of magnetic permeability.