Styropyro's Mechanical Light Bulb from 1675? - Nuclear Engineer Reacts

[00:00:00]thing. Look at that.

[00:00:01]>> What is that?

[00:00:03]>> [laughter] >> starts >> It's time for some more Styropyro.

[00:00:06]Specifically, a mechanical light bulb from 1675 using mercury. Okay, there he is, happy as always. Let's see.

[00:00:15]>> Now, if I haven't made it clear by now, I like to explore the overlap of chemistry and electricity.

[00:00:20]>> Welcome to nuclear engineering. A lot of people think it's mostly neutrons. It really isn't. I spend a lot more time working where multiple disciplines overlap. So, chemistry, electrical engineering, thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, plasma physics, material science, control systems, and so on and so forth. Cuz after all, a reactor isn't just a nuclear machine. It's an incredibly complicated mechanical, electrical, and chemical plant that just happens to contain a nuclear heat source. So, yes, Styropyro's projects are similar. He's not just doing electricity or chemistry or lasers. It all interacts.

[00:01:00]>> I don't just mean in the form of batteries, but also in the realm of plasmas.

[00:01:05]>> Mhm. Yeah, plasmas aren't sci-fi. It's really just ionized gas. They show up everywhere at engineering, not just fusion. Fluorescent lights, neon signs, welding, lightning, semiconductor fabrication, and of course, reactor instrumentation.

[00:01:20]>> I found that many of the same chemical tricks that work in fireworks can be made even more impressive >> Oh, that's amazing. magnetic fields to the mix.

[00:01:29]>> More recently, I acquired a vacuum pump and some noble gases.

[00:01:32]>> Mhm. Vacuum engineering is criminally underrated. There are huge differences between a rough vacuum, high vacuum, and ultra high vacuum. Each regime has different dominant physics. That is to say, nothing or the absence of things is quite difficult to create.

[00:01:50]>> Which allow me to make my own custom plasma tubes.

[00:01:52]I've been experimenting with all sorts of mixes, but of course, my most interesting tubes have been impossible to replicate as they seem to be enhanced by mystery trace contaminants.

[00:02:03]>> [laughter] >> Contamination matters a lot. One part per million, one tiny impurity, one microscopic oxide layer, one fingerprint. Sometimes that's enough to completely change system behavior. Kind of like in reactor water chemistry, the primary coolant contains dissolved impurities measured in parts per billion because corrosion products become activated by neutron capture in the react. So, your tiny contamination becomes radioactive. And in plasma systems, like what Styropyro is talking about, tiny contaminants completely change the emission spectra.

[00:02:39]>> Anyway, onto the main point of this video. All of my tubes so far have been powered by high-frequency electrical sources like Tesla coils.

[00:02:47]>> Sure.

[00:02:47]>> However, >> Of course, he would use Tesla coils.

[00:02:50]>> I'm interested in making a bulb that generates light without an external field and instead [clears throat] is driven mechanically.

[00:02:56]>> Mechanically driven light cuz after all, normally it's electrical energy. So, here we're talking about mechanical energy gives electrostatic charge gives plasma, which gives light. So, a multi-step conversion chain here. After all, every joule has to come from somewhere. Nothing appears by magic.

[00:03:16]>> Now, surprisingly, this kind of thing was discovered long before the light bulb that we know was ever invented.

[00:03:22]>> Mhm.

[00:03:22]>> Way back in 1675, it was just >> Wow, I did not know that. That pre-dates electricity as a science, a lot of science as a science. I think back then you're into people calling it natural philosophy. But yeah, Maxwell, Faraday, Volta, Ampere, Edison, yeah, all of those people. So, 1675, they observed plasma before they understood electrons existed. Kind of kinda me of early observations of radioactivity. Becquerel had no idea what nuclei were. He simply noticed photographic plates fogging. Observation always comes before explanation.

[00:04:02]>> discovered that mercury metal would glow if it was placed in an evacuated glass container and shaken before the light bulb that we know was ever invented.

[00:04:09]Way back in 1675, it was discovered that mercury metal would glow if it was placed in an evacuated glass container and shaken.

[00:04:18]This was an accidental observation and it happened when the astronomer Jean Picard noticed that the mercury in his barometer glowed when he moved it at night.

[00:04:26]>> Not to be confused with Jean-Luc Picard, but yeah, imagine being an astronomer in the 17th century. You're carrying a barometer and it starts glowing. Wonder if a lot of people that then ex- thought they summoned something supernatural, but instead it was plasma physics.

[00:04:41]>> This led to the effect being studied by many high-profile scientists of the day.

[00:04:45]I've known about this effect for quite a while. Only recently have I been equipped to actually replicate it. So yeah, without further ado, let's make a mechanical light bulb.

[00:04:54]>> [laughter] >> So I want to put some mercury in this flask and then pull a vacuum on it. But before I put any mercury inside of it, I'm going to have to stick a stem on top. Something like something like this here. That way I can hook it up to my vacuum pump. Which means I get to break out my glass torch here. And this thing is just powered by by some propane and then a couple medical oxygen concentrators running in parallel.

[00:05:15]Now before I light this torch >> this shop here. Organized chaos.

[00:05:18]>> I should warn you that I'm a horrible glass worker. Like I'm a total noob. I should know just enough to pull off what I'm trying to show you guys, hopefully.

[00:05:27]So yeah, bear with me here. This is This might be kind of difficult. So I should start by by cutting off a piece of this this glass tubing which is going to be my stem. I'm going to do this by scoring this tube with this huge quartz crystal which acts as a bit of a scribe. I should probably get something a bit more I don't know, official than this, but this seems to work all right.

[00:05:50]So now I'm >> I don't know much about glass blowing, so feel free to point out these sorts of things in the comments.

[00:05:56]>> some get some water on here, which apparently is important for like shockwave propagation. But this water step, putting the water on the uh >> putting water on this little scribe, you know, this cut point is important. I don't know what you call it. And Yeah, okay, that worked pretty well.

[00:06:14]That sometimes I've made some shanks on accidents, [laughter] but uh yeah, that one worked pretty well.

[00:06:20]Okay, so I'll set this here.

[00:06:22]So now I'm going to put on my didymium glasses here, and these uh these block out some of the uh most of the sodium flare from the glass when it's >> You got to have the right sort of eye protection, not just generic safety glasses. Just like he does with his laser videos, you have to have the type of eye protection for the type of hazard, for the type of laser, the type of plasma that you're working with.

[00:06:45]>> inside the torch. Cuz otherwise, it's so bright you can't really see what you're doing. And they work really well. It's uh kind of reminds me of laser goggles for uh for like, you know, yellow light.

[00:06:55]So yeah, let's let's uh go ahead and light this torch here.

[00:07:00]Get that going. Get that torch going.

[00:07:06]So I don't have a glass lathe, so I'm going to use my portable lathe.

[00:07:13]>> Portable lathe, that's that's hilarious.

[00:07:15]>> There's tubing inside the flame here.

[00:07:20]Now it's nice and hot.

[00:07:25]Flare that out.

[00:07:27]I'm basically just making a a joint, that way I can stick it on that that uh Now that flask there >> Connecting face, sure.

[00:07:33]>> All right, now I'm going to heat up this flask as well as this little joint I made, and I'm going to try to stick them together. This part is This is hard for me.

[00:07:43]>> Sure.

[00:07:44]>> this would be far easier on a on a glass lathe.

[00:07:49]And you know, another issue for me is I have such little depth perception cuz I have a lazy eye. So, aligning these with a flame and each other is always a challenge.

[00:07:58]>> I appreciate the explanation here, compensating for reduced depth perception by changing technique. After all, good engineers don't require perfect conditions, they just need to adapt. After all, engineering I would argue is not about innate talent. It's about building methods that work with your limitations.

[00:08:16]>> That's nice and hot.

[00:08:21]Uh Not >> [laughter] >> It's okay.

[00:08:26]>> It's >> Like I would do any better. Yeah.

[00:08:28]>> tender. Oh, darn it. Other one's Yeah, I mean, it's open. I I think I can make it work. It's just going to be so ugly.

[00:08:39]>> I like that he leaves this sort of stuff in cuz a lot of these big engineering videos, a lot of these makers on YouTube often only show success. When this is what real engineering looks like. You try something, it doesn't work, you modify, repeat, keep trying it. So, nothing wrong with not being the best glass worker. That's that's fine. And this makes me appreciate scientific glass blowers even more.

[00:09:08]Laboratory glass work that you see in like chemistry labs in your nuclear power plant is astonishingly specialized. I know we often use custom borosilicate apparatus in the nuclear industry. So, making leak-free vacuum joints is extraordinarily difficult. One tiny crack, one microscopic leak, your vacuum disappears. It's a different version of maintaining containment integrity here.

[00:09:35]>> I'm going to get that hot again.

[00:09:38]so I can give it a good squish.

[00:09:41]Oh boy, this is an ugly ugly.

[00:09:46]Oh my goodness, it's so bad. This is so bad.

[00:09:49]>> bud.

[00:09:50]>> This is so bad.

[00:09:52]Uh maybe I should >> [laughter] >> But then this is so good.

[00:10:02]>> No, I see people's beautiful glass works and and I I know a really scientific glass blower who actually taught me uh you know everything I know about glass blowing. Thank you Glockenspiel, that's his uh his Discord name.

[00:10:16]But uh and and you know I've seen all the beautiful work he does and then then to see this to see this absolute abomination [laughter] is is just wow.

[00:10:26]>> [snorts] >> Gives it character.

[00:10:28]>> Yeah, again it's it's so hard with my I don't have I can't tell distance. That's so hard for me. So I I can't catch a ball and uh yeah and and judging distance between things is so hard cuz I don't have stereo vision. I was born that way. It wasn't lasers.

[00:10:42]But uh >> [laughter] >> Good good [clears throat] clarification there. I I I appreciate it. I think in one of his other videos he referred to it as sport ball which is hilarious.

[00:10:51]>> Yeah. So this all is have to do that again and and just learn in different ways than most people would when it comes to to glass blowing.

[00:11:00]Okay, so uh you know, I think I'm going to just try to repair this one later and and try a new one from scratch just because uh that's that's going to take me a while.

[00:11:10]That one is really bad. We'll go ahead >> him showing us all his scribbles.

[00:11:15]>> another piece with my cool quartz crystal >> engineering scribble on >> sound of that crunchy glass.

[00:11:24]>> crunchy >> ASMR >> Yes.

[00:11:27]>> Get some get [snorts] some water on that.

[00:11:31]And we'll get some water on that and >> Pop.

[00:11:38]>> Yeah, that works. Okay.

[00:11:41]So, back into my portable lathe.

[00:11:46]>> I'm going to start calling it the portable lathe from now on.

[00:11:48]>> Yeah. I'm in my joint again.

[00:11:52]All right. Here we go. I'm going to try this again.

[00:12:00]>> There we go.

[00:12:00]>> Okay, that's that's better.

[00:12:03]>> As far as I can tell from this distance, sure.

[00:12:05]>> piece.

[00:12:06]This camera can see that.

[00:12:08]>> Okay, I I can work with this. This it's not going to be good. Like I'll be happy with I'll be happy with >> Good enough.

[00:12:14]>> pretty >> Perfection is the enemy of good enough.

[00:12:17]>> joint here, but >> That is one thing that I've had to learn fairly early on in my career within nuclear engineering is a lot of I know a lot of engineers, especially right out of college, can be like real perfectionists and wanting to have everything done perfectly well and have a perfectly executed plan, but when I transitioned from the division, a lot of times you have to make decisions without knowing all of the information. That's just simply because you can't know all of the information.

[00:12:54]And you do have procedures, you have processes, you have training, but you still have to make decisions. So, that was definitely eye-opening for me throughout my career and working there definitely got over my perfectionism, if you will.

[00:13:11]>> Just It's just the effect I want to show you.

[00:13:14]>> Okay.

[00:13:15]>> Woo! It is liquidy.

[00:13:19]Yeah, I think that looks pretty decent.

[00:13:22]At least for what I'm going to be showing you guys today.

[00:13:25]Okay, I'll that cool.

[00:13:28]All right. Now, I've broken out this mercury here, so I can put some inside this flask. Now, a funny story. I got this bottle something like almost 20 years ago. It's 2 lb.

[00:13:39]I remember when I when I you know, when I was waiting on it, so I was expecting to get this huge jug and to see this 2-lb bottle show up that's just so tiny.

[00:13:48]It was just kind of surprising, even though I should have known better.

[00:13:51]>> It's got high density. Now, mercury is actually a really cool material here. I mean, so first off, it's conductive, then it's liquid, and it doesn't wet the glass. That last point is really important with the glass. Something like gallium sticks, but mercury rolls. And that rolling motion generates triboelectric charge separation. Without that, you wouldn't have a discharge.

[00:14:16]>> Another funny thing is that I paid 20 bucks for this bottle and it cost you several hundred for this much today, so >> That's cool.

[00:14:25]>> Invested in mercury, not gold.

[00:14:26]>> [laughter] >> I'll start by uh I'll uh I'm going to start by pulling some up in the syringe here.

[00:14:32]>> Never thought I'd hear about commodity trading on this show. No, you know what?

[00:14:36]I'm actually not that surprised now that he mentions it.

[00:14:40]>> Awkward.

[00:14:41]Pulling mercury through a syringe.

[00:14:45]So.

[00:14:46]>> It's got some heft.

[00:14:50]>> [laughter] >> Discard after use.

[00:14:53]>> All right, I got that cleared.

[00:14:56]All right, so now I will seal this off.

[00:14:59]Gosh, mercury's so gorgeous. It's too bad about its toxicity.

[00:15:02]Such a beautiful metal.

[00:15:04]>> Mhm.

[00:15:04]>> Now, I >> He's right to bring up the toxicity. I like that he didn't sensationalize it.

[00:15:09]After all, elemental mercury is not the same as organic mercury compound. Those are very different hazards. Just like in nuclear engineering, radiation is not one thing. You have alpha sources and beta sources, which are very different hazards than say gamma radiation, which is very different from neutron.

[00:15:27]Different hazards, different controls.

[00:15:30]Same with mercury. Most alpha particles can get stopped by your skin. Beta particles can get stopped with something with about credit card thickness. Lead, you need gammas, you need several inches of lead. And neutrons, you need several feet of concrete in order to stop most of them. Different hazards, different controls. Same thing with mercury.

[00:15:50]>> I know the toxicity of mercury, at least in the metal form, is going to be kind of a hot topic online. Cuz yeah, the bare metal is pretty nerds. All of this mercury's dirty.

[00:16:01]But yeah, the the bare metal isn't that >> difference between a source, a pure source, and a source with contaminants.

[00:16:09]>> toxic. The compounds are much more toxic. However, if you spill mercury indoors, that's a really big problem because it's mercury is surprisingly volatile. So it'll it will evaporate and then inhaled mercury vapor is very bad.

[00:16:25]That's very easily absorbed by the body, unlike >> Yes, exactly. Exposure pathway matters.

[00:16:32]Inhalation changes everything. Just like I said with alpha particles, a lot of them are stopped by your skin. Well, if you inhale it, that's a problem. Alpha particles have a force multiplier known as a quality factor that is a factor of 20 per unit relative to gammas. So, external alpha radiation almost harmless. Internal alpha, very dangerous. What's also dangerous isn't just the times 20 multiplier, it's that the isotope now gets inside you and starts admitting. Can be challenging to remove. And then you start looking at the other type of half-life. That is to say, the biological half-life in addition to the radiological half-life that that look at when you look at internal contamination.

[00:17:18]>> Like this uh the liquid metal. So, it'll it'll cause problems really quickly.

[00:17:23]So, yeah. Reason we're >> Liquid metals are also challenging to work with if you're we're going to use them as a coolant in a nuclear power plant. They have advantages like low relatively low temperature and pressure, but the disadvantage is the chemistry.

[00:17:35]>> These gloves is mostly just because this is is such dirty mercury.

[00:17:39]>> Mhm.

[00:17:40]>> Now, before I hook this thing up to my vacuum pump, I'm going to jam in a little bit of glass wool just because I don't want to you know, if there's any like trapped air bubbles in there that want to pop once this is under vacuum, I don't want to like splash mercury into my vacuum system.

[00:17:55]>> Yes, tiny engineering solution, huge practical payoff. Prevent mercury from entering that vacuum pump. Good engineering often looks boring until you imagine trying to clean mercury out of your vacuum pump. Then, that little glass pump or glass plug becomes brilliant.

[00:18:11]>> Cuz that would be uh that'd be really annoying. So, go ahead and poke this in.

[00:18:18]Yeah.

[00:18:19]Doesn't need to be anything crazy.

[00:18:22]>> In nuclear power plants, we mainly use um vacuum pumps for maintaining condenser vacuum, so primarily in the non-nuclear part of the plant. And there, it's mainly about thermal efficiency as well as corrosion and uh water chemistry control to uh minimize the uh build-up of contaminants. But, it's a huge efficiency boon to uh try to maintain as much vacuum as you possibly can in your main condenser. And there's at the plant that I worked at, we used vacuum pumps. One other way of accomplishing the same thing is to use um air ejectors, sort of jet pump, but lowering pressure is the goal.

[00:19:02]>> There we go.

[00:19:04]It's always kind of uh it's always kind of nerve-wracking tipping over this mercury.

[00:19:08]>> Mhm.

[00:19:10]>> There we go.

[00:19:11]>> Hit control.

[00:19:12]>> Ooh. Okay.

[00:19:13]There we go. We got it.

[00:19:15]>> Nice.

[00:19:15]>> All right. We got it hooked up.

[00:19:17]And I don't know if you can see that.

[00:19:19]There's some cool standing wave action in the mercury from the vibrations of the vacuum pump.

[00:19:24]>> Standing waves are awesome. Taking a system that off that oscillates and getting a cool little snapshot.

[00:19:31]>> If I I dampen them, they'll look more shiny.

[00:19:35]Oh, yeah.

[00:19:37]Now, let's pump it down.

[00:19:39]And again, just taking it real slowly.

[00:19:41]Don't want to don't want to bite it up too much at once.

[00:19:44]I'm rocking it just to kind of loosen any potential air bubbles that might be there.

[00:19:50]Okay. So, it's about full vacuum on you know, of course, depends on how you want to define that.

[00:19:57]>> Mhm. Yeah, you can define it usually as kind of like how you have gauge pressure. You can say like inches of mercury vacuum. That is to say how much below atmospheric pressure you are, or you can just look at it as absolute pressure relative to an absolute zero vacuum. Same way you look at a pressure gauge on say the reactor coolant system operating pressure, which if it's 2235 PSI gauge, it's really about 2250 absolute. The vacuum gauge, you're essentially doing it backwards because you're looking at pressure relative to atmospheric. The other way of looking at the same thing is simply sticking a negative sign in front of your pressure.

[00:20:47]You can't have negative pressure less than absolute zero, but you can have negative pressure relative to atmospheric pressure being your reference pressure.

[00:20:57]>> This vacuum pump system, um I can usually get down to like maybe 3 mTor. So, there's some of >> Okay. At those pressures or lack thereof, mean free path becomes enormous. That is to say, gas molecules can travel surprisingly long distances before they collide with anything, simply because there's it's so sparse.

[00:21:18]And that's what plasma behavior can change so dramatically when you're taking under vac. Just like in reactor physics, neutron mean free path determines interaction probability. That is to say, will it fission? Will it get absorbed? Will it get scattered? Those sorts of things. You're just dealing with gas molecules here instead of neutrons. Different particles, similar overall transport mechanisms, cuz after all, we're talking mechanically.

[00:21:44]We're not talking charge in the case of neutrons, because they don't have them.

[00:21:48]But obviously, when you have plasmas, its whole defining characteristic is charge.

[00:21:52]>> Try contaminants in the glass, and a little bit of that will be the mercury that's evap- evaporating there.

[00:21:58]I take this little handheld Tesla coil.

[00:22:02]>> Handheld Tesla coil.

[00:22:04]Got to love Styropyro.

[00:22:05]>> You can see the glow there. In fact, >> That's a nice little blue glow.

[00:22:08]>> quickly.

[00:22:11]Okay, so I've dimmed the lights, and you can see the Tesla coil makes it light up really well.

[00:22:16]>> Mhm.

[00:22:16]>> So, that's uh It's due to a few things. Part of that is just residual air, some contaminants in the glass that are >> So, this is a cool little diagnostic.

[00:22:25]Think of it as physics testing that you do before reactor start up. So, you always verify, you never assume. Just because your calculations before start up, in the case of nuclear physics testing, were peer checked, independently verified by a third-party vendor, you still want to measure it directly. So, yeah, he's basically doing system verification right here.

[00:22:50]>> gassing off. And of course, uh the mercury itself.

[00:22:54]So, uh >> Mhm.

[00:22:55]>> if this if it wasn't mercury in there, I would I would bake the glass in that pump, but I I obviously do that.

[00:23:02]So, I'm going to shut >> So, nothing is perfectly clean even if you take it to near absolute zero pressure. Vacuum systems outgas, metals outgas, glass outgases, that's kind of funny to say, and so does rubber.

[00:23:15]Engineers constantly fight contamination.

[00:23:19]>> Shut off this valve here, isolate it from the vacuum pump.

[00:23:22]And now I'm really bad at this part. I need to seal it off now.

[00:23:28]>> Mhm.

[00:23:29]Trying to seal something under vacuum.

[00:23:31]Well, you get one shot, kind of like welding reactor piping. One mistake and you have to start over.

[00:23:39]>> Ah, okay.

[00:23:41]>> Easy there. Get yourself in the zone.

[00:23:43]>> Okay.

[00:23:44]So, basically I need to It's so hard for me to uniformly heat this circular tubing with this torch. I really need one of those fancy glassworking uh like torch heads that >> Mhm.

[00:23:55]Sure.

[00:23:55]>> heat the whole thing at once cuz it just Doing this uniformly is hard. I'm Here we go.

[00:23:59]>> Uniform heating is very important concept within reactor physics. Just trying to keep everything within your reactor at a uniform state, not just in terms of heat, but in terms of neutron flux. You want to try to avoid having uh certain hot spots the best you can. So, ideally you'd make a um spherical reactor vessel, but that's just impractical, expensive, very difficult to machine and fabricate. So, you're left with a more uh cylindrical vessel.

[00:24:27]>> Here we go. Here goes nothing.

[00:24:31]It takes so much attention to do this the right way.

[00:24:37]>> Doing something like this and and doing some sort of video commentary that is another little uh >> [laughter] >> challenge to this when you're usually doing something that you're so focused, you a lot of people don't even really say anything.

[00:24:51]>> Okay.

[00:24:53]And this.

[00:24:54]>> And yes, this is live. He didn't He's not talking over a recording of himself.

[00:24:58]That's hard.

[00:24:59]>> Okay.

[00:25:00]Okay, this one was acceptable. Okay, scared me the mercury in there sloshing around scared scared me, but okay. I'm going to let this cool for a second.

[00:25:10]All right, so we'll see how that works.

[00:25:12]All right, I got that finished flask here and if I give it a shake, I really really don't see anything.

[00:25:19]It's I guess it's not that dim in here, but yeah, can't say I see anything there.

[00:25:27]All right, so if I shake it around you can see it.

[00:25:30]>> It's very very faint glow. It really takes a a night adjusted eye to to see that.

[00:25:36]Very >> So, when I'm looking at this, I'm trying to visualize someone in 1675 because we're so accustomed to everything light and little LEDs everywhere, but a little faint glow back then is going to be very noticeable. Cuz people you just don't see much of that in the pre-electricity era. So, someone even seeing this little faint glow, they must have thought it looked supernatural.

[00:26:02]Kind of like the first time everyone saw the Cherenkov glow, which is caused by going faster than light in water. You can't go faster than light in a vacuum, but you can absolutely go faster than light in water and high energy particles in a reactor most certainly do that. But it must have had that similar otherworldly experience back in 1675 just looking into one of these little things and seeing some sort of glowy thing.

[00:26:29]>> Faint ghostly glow. Uh I did want to note something in the vacuum here. So, on my vacuum pump, I saw that I pumped it I pumped it down about 5 mtorr, so that's about 6 or 7 millions of an atmosphere. So, about one of that is the mercury vapor itself and the rest is the residual air or whatever might whatever my vacuum pump >> To give you a sense of scale, um, the main condenser at a nuclear power plant is about, um, 29 in of mercury vacuum.

[00:26:58]That is to say, atmospheric, which is about 30 minus 29, so about 1-ish, um, which is considerably higher pressure than this, but keep in mind the, uh, main condenser, uh, consists of structures with a higher volume than my house, and each of those vacuum pumps, there's typically three operating in series, and one of those vacuum pumps is roughly the size of my car.

[00:27:25]>> [laughter] >> So, much less pressure, but a much bigger volume you are moving in that particular application.

[00:27:33]>> pump, uh, burped up, I guess.

[00:27:36]Now with the lights all the way off, you can see it It actually is really easy to make that to make that glass glow there.

[00:27:42]Now apparently this effect isn't super sensitive to the, uh, the degree of vacuum, but it is sensitive to how pure or how clean the mercury is, and how to clean the glasses. At least that's what the video says. I know for a fact >> Here's how you find the contaminants, buddy.

[00:27:56]>> And this mercury's dirty, so this effect could probably be made better if if I had, uh, a cleaner, uh, cleaner mercury there.

[00:28:03]>> Still looks cool to me.

[00:28:04]>> definitely see it. Just It's not super bright.

[00:28:08]Now if I cheat and, uh, power this thing externally with a Tesla coil, uh, check it out. So you can see it lights very, very easily. It makes this nice >> a check source.

[00:28:18]>> nice like whitish purple glow there. So, yeah, it strikes very, very easily.

[00:28:22]>> Mhm.

[00:28:24]>> Now since the pressure in here is so low, you just get this really really diffuse plasma in there. If the pressure was higher, you'd start seeing like filaments, but, uh, but yeah, this was I just wanted to demonstrate this effect.

[00:28:37]So if I keep the mercury flask far enough away from the coil that it doesn't self-ionize, then give it a shake, it's it's enough to uh, cause the cause the gas to uh, break down there.

[00:28:47]It's pretty cool.

[00:28:47]>> Oh, look at that.

[00:28:48]>> You can use this to sense electric fields, I guess.

[00:28:53]>> And to think they had no idea what electric fields were when they were first using these sorts of things.

[00:28:59]>> And again with the darker lighting, you can see it makes quite a bit of light.

[00:29:05]It turned out pretty cool.

[00:29:06]Now, while you love this effect, it's interesting. It It really isn't that impressive. However, it doesn't take that much extra to to really enhance this effect. So, the idea is that after pumping it down in vacuum, you backfill with a small amount of noble gas, and that really enhances the effect. So, I'm going to go ahead and put together another flask.

[00:29:24]>> Okay, so basically plasma engineering here.

[00:29:28]>> Yes.

[00:29:29]For this next one, I'm going to take a stab at repairing this garbage flask that I uh I >> Okay.

[00:29:34]>> job on earlier.

[00:29:35]>> blowing.

[00:29:36]>> I guess I will start by Yeah, I'm just going to try that. I'm going to just try scoring it here.

[00:29:46]Yeah.

[00:29:48]Ooh.

[00:29:49]Oh, beautiful.

[00:29:51]>> Well done.

[00:29:51]>> I'll get another piece of uh glass prepared here.

[00:29:56]That one sucks.

[00:29:59]Oopsies. That one What is that? What's that?

[00:30:03]So, I I guess I'll just have to use a new piece of tubing.

[00:30:08]Um The most important thing is that I fix the flask, right?

[00:30:16]Got some water on here.

[00:30:18]>> All right.

[00:30:19]>> And yeet.

[00:30:21]Perfect. [laughter] >> Did he just say yeet?

[00:30:26]>> [snorts] >> Oh, man. This is This is hilarious.

[00:30:30]>> Almost.

[00:30:31]It'd be really It'd be really nice if I could hook this thing up to the drill.

[00:30:38]So, you can see it's nice and hot. It is is to um I just wanted to kind of work that opening a bit.

[00:30:45]>> Okay.

[00:30:49]>> Yeah, okay.

[00:30:49]>> Portable lathe in action.

[00:30:52]>> Now, now for the the hard part is actually joining the two.

[00:30:58]I got to get them both hot.

[00:31:02]This part is so difficult for me. I wish it wasn't, but it is.

[00:31:07]All right. Am I ready? I think I >> There you go.

[00:31:16]>> I don't think I can work with that.

[00:31:18]>> There you go.

[00:31:19]I like that this is the hardest part for him. That's just awesome. And I I again, I appreciate the, um, humility and the vulnerability here of showing things you're not great at. That that's awesome.

[00:31:30]>> Nice and liquidy here.

[00:31:33]Oh, I think I think this will do.

[00:31:35]I think it's not it's not ready, but I think this one will do.

[00:31:40]>> There you go. Good enough. Good enough is good enough. Or uh close enough for government work.

[00:31:46]>> I've uh filled my my next flask with mercury here.

[00:31:50]And I'll put it on the pump ever so carefully.

[00:31:55]Okay, now I I will I will very slowly and carefully suck down this this Oh, that's that's way too fast.

[00:32:05]>> [laughter] >> Okay, a little bit slower than that.

[00:32:07]>> Maximum vacuuming.

[00:32:08]>> Goodness.

[00:32:09]>> Small volume relative to the size of that pump, so make of that what you will.

[00:32:15]>> It's pumping down.

[00:32:16]Okay.

[00:32:18]So, like I said, uh, I'm going to do this one differently.

[00:32:21]So, instead of just pulling a a vacuum on it, I'm going to, uh, you know, first suck out as much air as I can, and then I'm going to backfill it with, uh, with neon gas. And that's going to really change how this works. I actually have a a of other gases to, uh, experiment with as well, but can I tell you the neon is the best, so we'll >> Okay, so neon is a good choice cuz it's a noble gas, so you don't have to worry about chemical reactivity with with mercury. That's one reason why when you look at radio isotopes, noble gas dose is certainly counted. I mean like xenon 135 for instance as a people getting exposed to that that's absolutely counted, but the nice thing about if you're exposed to xenon 135 versus something else is you're just going to exhale it because it's noble gas. It's not going to stay within your body. So, he's taking an advantage of that property here. But what this backfill does do is it kind of makes a moderator cuz the pressure of that gas is going to determine the breakdown voltage, the mean free path, the collision frequency, and the light output just like moderator density in a nuclear power plant. It's a balancing act. You can have too much, and you can have too little. And here he's optimizing I'm guessing brightness, whereas in the other one you optimize reactivity, so the reactor stays critical. And critical really means is steady state constant reactor power.

[00:33:54]>> We'll We'll do neon.

[00:33:56]All right, so I think it's pumped down enough. So, I'm going to go ahead close off this valve. Now, I'm going to I'm going to put in some neon. So, >> There you go.

[00:34:06]>> fill that up real fast.

[00:34:08]Okay, so I've put in 100 torr of neon. Let's see if we can see the effect. Oh, yeah.

[00:34:15]There you go.

[00:34:16]>> All right.

[00:34:17]>> Oh, yeah, that's really cool. I got to I got to kill the lights so you can see this.

[00:34:22]So, now when I excite it with the Tesla coil, >> Mhm.

[00:34:25]>> it's a gorgeous glow in Yeah, so now I'm going to go ahead and seal this off.

[00:34:31]I wish I was better at this part.

[00:34:34]But maybe it's just because I don't have the right tools.

[00:34:37]Something like that.

[00:34:38]>> Fair enough.

[00:34:44]>> No.

[00:34:46]It's why it takes so much takes so much concentration >> It does.

[00:34:50]>> this and I still don't even do that good of a job.

[00:34:53]>> It's hard.

[00:34:54]>> But uh Yeah.

[00:34:57]Yeah, there we go.

[00:34:59]So we'll let this cool and let's see what it does.

[00:35:03]Here's that neon flask and as you can see it's hard to prevent it from lighting up at night.

[00:35:08]>> Oh, that's cool.

[00:35:09]>> So easily and it's incredibly bright. I just >> never seen anything like it.

[00:35:15]>> Makes me smile when I hear him pleasantly surprised by that. I mean and these are really some great engineering moments cuz yeah, the prediction says it should work and reality says works way better. That's that's awesome. It's what keeps scientists doing science.

[00:35:29]>> This is one of the coolest things I've ever made. It just it's so striking.

[00:35:35]Look at that. It just you can read off >> orange. It's beautiful.

[00:35:40]>> It just lights up so easily.

[00:35:42]I'm just shocked it works this well. I would have never expected anything like this.

[00:35:48]>> It's very satisfying the noise it makes and the glow.

[00:35:54]>> Now, I don't even need total darkness to see this effect. It's >> Yeah.

[00:35:57]>> very apparent in in like fairly decent light conditions. It's Look at that. It just it lights up my hand and everything. I'm just astonished.

[00:36:06]>> It's beautiful.

[00:36:07]>> It's just mind-blowing it works this well. Look at that. It glows so well.

[00:36:12]>> Mhm.

[00:36:12]>> Tip it over.

[00:36:14]Wow.

[00:36:15]>> [clears throat] >> It just so impressive. I just I'm shocked it works this well.

[00:36:22]>> [laughter] >> I would have never guessed >> Oh, that's great.

[00:36:24]>> Look at that. The mercury gets >> Great to hear him say that.

[00:36:27]>> And it falls out. Wow.

[00:36:30]This Wow, this is one of the coolest things I've ever made. Seriously. It's so simple.

[00:36:35]>> That's saying something. He's made a lot of really cool things.

[00:36:40]>> It's magical.

[00:36:42]Look at that. I can stare at this thing all day.

[00:36:45]>> [laughter] >> Seriously. It's just wonderful.

[00:36:47]>> Love hearing him nerd out.

[00:36:49]>> So, this effect is triboelectric in nature. So, it's like friction-based.

[00:36:53]>> Mhm.

[00:36:53]>> Basically, what's happening is the mercury slides over the glass and that induces a charge and once there's enough charge built up, then the electric field gets high enough that it can ionize the the neon and short out and that's where you get the light. So, yeah.

[00:37:08]>> Excellent explanation and this just kind of shows how much we still have to learn. Um so, we understand electrostatics pretty well, just, you know, as a civilization. But, triboelectric charging still isn't fully understood. I mean, people A lot of people think that like science is finished and like certain fields of science like Newtonian mechanics for instance became obsolete once um relativity showed up and then that became obsolete once quantum mechanics showed up. No, it's not It's not at all how it works. Even familiar phenomena have unanswered questions. Same with um corrosion, turbulent flow, boiling. Man, that's a deep art and science in boiling when it comes to nuclear engineering, all the different types of boiling, why certain type of boiling in a pressurized water reactor such as nucleate boiling is totally fine, but departure from nucleate boiling, that's something you design against. And like crack propagation, deformation in materials.

[00:38:10]Man, there's so many engineering questions just still out there with things that we like the triboelectric effect that we kind of know pretty well, but not completely.

[00:38:21]>> [laughter] >> That's It's interesting that it works this way.

[00:38:26]So, it really doesn't even have to be mercury to cause this effect. It's just mercury works really well. And in terms of other liquid metals, I don't even know of any other liquid metals that uh wouldn't just straight-up wet the glass. Uh mercury >> Like gallium for instance.

[00:38:40]>> is the only thing I can think of that will just roll off of it as opposed to, you know, making a mirror finish.

[00:38:46]>> Mhm.

[00:38:46]>> Wow.

[00:38:48]So, I couldn't help myself and I had to make another one of these just cuz it's such an amazing >> you do. That's awesome.

[00:38:53]>> make a comment about triboelectricity.

[00:38:55]So, you know, the idea of of like friction causing static build-up has been known about forever. But, it's still a it's still a poorly understood phenomenon.

[00:39:03]>> Thanks for bringing that up. I was just thinking about that. Yeah. Uh it's >> Come on. So, apparently it's hard to uh it's hard to come up with a mechanism that describes the effect that works with modern physics. And I just find that so weird because, you know, the idea of static electricity is such a familiar concept. You know, we've all experienced that.

[00:39:22]>> Yep.

[00:39:23]>> I mean, even thunderstorms work that way.

[00:39:25]Uh you know, that the charge separation of thunderstorm is is at least widely believed to be triboelectric from uh ice crystals rubbing against each other.

[00:39:34]>> Sure.

[00:39:34]>> So, yeah, it's just so strange to me that it's still a poorly understood phenomenon uh even though it's >> I mean, look at gravity for instance.

[00:39:41]The whole graviton rabbit hole. Yeah.

[00:39:44]>> [laughter] >> just so familiar to everybody.

[00:39:49]>> Mhm.

[00:39:49]>> So, yeah, just an interesting tidbit there. And gosh, look at those things glow.

[00:39:54]I also made this much simpler straight tube and you can see the effect is still very visible.

[00:40:00]Although, I think when it's so smooth and straight like this, I think it actually doesn't work as well as when you have like curves and stuff for the mercury to splatter over. But, yeah, I can still see it very very well.

[00:40:12]So, here I have this zigzag tube.

[00:40:15]>> Zigzag.

[00:40:17]Okay.

[00:40:18]Well, this is just how this makes sense to me just knowing about fluid flow laminar versus turbulent flow. Um so, these bends increase disturbance, more disturbance in this case it'd be more charge separation rather than vortices in the case of turbulent flow and a stronger discharge. And those flow disturbances, those vortices when you look at fluid dynamics often enhance heat transfer, which is why a lot of heat exchangers are designed to have those turbulent features in mind to enhance it. I mean, yeah, it has its drawbacks meaning it's going to ultimately cause more wear and tear to your contact surfaces.

[00:40:59]But in some cases, it's a deliberate design decision in order to maximize heat transfer.

[00:41:05]>> Yeah, it seems that having seems that having points that obstruct the motion seem to make it brighter.

[00:41:12]>> Mhm.

[00:41:12]>> So, I got this zigzag tube here and it just works so amazingly well.

[00:41:17]>> Zigzag tube.

[00:41:19]>> But I do want to point out one thing. On Wikipedia, it says that this effect is apparently it goes away after using it a bunch, but if anything I found the opposite. So, like it seems that more I use these tubes the brighter that they get. I don't know if it'll always stay that way, but yeah, it's just an interesting observation. And yeah, clearly having these bends in the tube really really seems to enhance the effect. I think just having anything that gets in the way to disrupt the flow seems to make more light.

[00:41:48]>> So, on the subject of that Wikipedia, I don't know the details as to why it said that. I mean, for one, it's Wikipedia, so take that for what it's worth, but two, I mean, it's possible that is indeed true under certain situations and it might not have accounted for a zigzag. It might have just been accounted for one bend or something or maybe something more extreme than a zigzag. Don't really know, but unexpected by itself doesn't necessarily mean something is wrong. It just means we learned something. Maybe surface conduction, maybe some oxide changes, could be microscopic cleaning. I I have no idea just by looking at this. That's ultimately how research begins when you find things that are unexpected.

[00:42:35]>> It's too much fun.

[00:42:37]This is too much fun. I could stare at this stupid thing all day.

[00:42:41]So once again, I'm going to cheat using this Tesla coil to uh light this thing externally.

[00:42:47]>> Nice.

[00:42:47]>> It just It's so cool.

[00:42:50]It's really hard to capture plasma effects like this on camera, but look how you get this crazy, you know, red arc starting from >> Oh, yeah.

[00:42:59]>> the mercury there.

[00:43:01]Look at that. Isn't it amazing?

[00:43:04]>> Love the gaps.

[00:43:05]>> Here I have a higher pressure one, so this one doesn't self-light as well, but the effects near a Tesla coil are even better. So let me get a zoom in on on that mercury bead.

[00:43:16]Look at that.

[00:43:17]>> [laughter] >> You can see it the plasma splits in a >> to watch.

[00:43:22]>> two, although it wants to pinch on a small region on on the mercury.

[00:43:26]Yeah. Okay, but the real the real one to see is this thing. Look at that.

[00:43:32]>> What is that?

[00:43:33]>> See how the arc >> [laughter] >> starts from like a small spot on the mercury from the current [snorts] pinching?

[00:43:39]It's >> Man.

[00:43:41]>> Gorgeous.

[00:43:45]>> That is beautiful.

[00:43:45]>> This magical arc there. And the color change, too.

[00:43:49]You get more of the blue on top and the and the red on the bottom.

[00:43:53]>> That is some beautiful plasma physics right there. Those pinched arcs are gorgeous. So the pinch immediately reminds me of fusion. I mean, kind of has to. So current flowing through plasma naturally produces magnetic fields, and those magnetic fields compress plasma, and that's what the famous Z-pinch concept uses. And so, here we are seeing a small laboratory-scale example. Different geometry, same electromagnetism.

[00:44:22]I guess the medium scale of seeing this Z-pinch in action would be his 400 car batteries together video, and the full scale being the fusion reactor. So, there you have it.

[00:44:33]>> [laughter] >> It's just absolutely incredible.

[00:44:38]I can get this to focus.

[00:44:41]We have that that current pinching is just so amazing to me.

[00:44:48]I love these old vintage >> He's going to mention fusion?

[00:44:51]>> square volumetric flasks, so I went ahead and made another one of these mercury tubes.

[00:44:55]>> Oh, that's pretty.

[00:44:57]It's square.

[00:44:57]>> magical. I I can't get over this effect.

[00:45:00]Look at the uh You got that whole current pinching and I love how it lights up the corners.

[00:45:06]>> just due to the shape.

[00:45:09]More green at the bottom.

[00:45:14]>> I'm assuming due to the shape. I mean, I can't say for sure that the amount of contaminants is held constant between this and the other.

[00:45:21]>> Wow.

[00:45:22]So colorful.

[00:45:26]All right. So, now I have another flask of mercury here that I'm pumping down on my vacuum pump. And once it's done doing that, I'm uh I'm going to I'm going to fill with krypton this time. Now, it's not going to be as bright as neon, but it does have some really interesting effects. So, uh yeah, it's it's worth making a flask of uh krypton and mercury.

[00:45:46]>> Okay, so krypton. So, let's see what changes. So, it's a different noble gas.

[00:45:51]It's going to have different ionization energy and a different emission spectrum. There's also I didn't quite catch what he said the uh pressure was for his uh neon, but the optimal pressure is probably going to be a little different. And this is spectroscopy. Every atom has its own fingerprint. Every radiation emitter has its own characteristic fingerprint. Just like in in nuclear engineering, we do gamma spectroscopy. So, different isotopes, different gamma energies, different fingerprint. But, it's the same overall idea. Neon has a string of glowy thingies at a certain pressure that says, "Hi, I'm neon." Krypton says, "Hi, I'm krypton." And cesium 137 says, "I'm cesium." I mean, nature loves these characteristic signatures here.

[00:46:39]>> I got about 40 torr in there.

[00:46:42]>> Okay, 40 torr.

[00:46:42]>> with this little Tesla coil again.

[00:46:46]Look at these.

[00:46:49]>> Okay.

[00:46:50]>> Beautiful green.

[00:46:51]>> Yeah, green. Green glowy things.

[00:46:54]>> Here they come.

[00:46:55]It's got nothing to do with nuclear.

[00:46:56]>> Isn't it gorgeous?

[00:46:59]>> radiation.

[00:47:00]>> I love that.

[00:47:01]>> Other than electromagnetic radiation, that is to say, visible light.

[00:47:06]>> So, of course, I mean, we want to see it light on its own without cheating with a Tesla coil, but just such a beautiful effect.

[00:47:15]>> I love the bridging in this one. That's pretty.

[00:47:18]>> The stakes feel so high when I got all this mercury in this glass fragile tube.

[00:47:30]Now, then.

[00:47:32]Okay, that one went all right.

[00:47:34]So, um mercury and krypton.

[00:47:38]So, this is the krypton tube, and it's >> It's blue in the dark. That's cool.

[00:47:44]>> It's not as bright as the neon one. It's quite a bit dimmer.

[00:47:47]>> It's branchier.

[00:47:48]>> seeing that green.

[00:47:49]>> Different emission spectrum.

[00:47:50]>> And it was it's hard to settle on a pressure. Uh for the neon, I've been doing 100 torr, and it looked like uh similar breakdown field with krypton would happen at 40 torr. So, that's the Sure.

[00:48:11]Fair enough.

[00:48:18]Mhm.

[00:48:22]So you can see it light up.

[00:48:24]Look at Can you see those beads? Look at the little Look at those. Oh, that is awesome.

[00:48:33]I just That's such a crazy effect. The closer I get the more more beads you get.

[00:48:39]And then of course there's that plasma pinch on the surface.

[00:48:43]When I bring it further back The plasma pinch I get, as far as the beads specifically, I can't say for sure. And the beads go away.

[00:48:53]But so gorgeous.

[00:48:57]I just I don't even know what causes that.

[00:49:02]Every part of that is beautiful.

[00:49:06]I get bring it further away. Yeah, every now and then you encounter phenomena that just warrants further investigation. I'm not going to guess on this one cuz it's definitely out there.

[00:49:18]And it's just down to one.

[00:49:22]Wow.

[00:49:26]Yeah.

[00:49:27]Look at how the mercury can like short out the arc.

[00:49:34]Now I know it's not just mercury that causes these triboelectric effects with glass. Let's try something else.

[00:49:42]All right.

[00:49:46]>> [laughter] >> Oh, yeah, that's cool. Really nice.

[00:49:51]>> Then I have some uh invasive ladybugs.

[00:49:54]But uh I was most excited for the Teflon one just because Teflon's [laughter] on the opposite side of the triboelectric series is glass. So uh yeah, so I figured this one would be the best. Now, of these tubes, it's really just that the Teflon and the copper that gave interesting results.

[00:50:10]>> Not the ladybugs. Darn.

[00:50:11]>> So you get a little bit So this is the Teflon tube, and you get uh you get a little bit of sparking going on there.

[00:50:18]>> Uh the tube has actually changed since I I first made it.

[00:50:22]And you can see some sparking, but it's real subtle. It's not that good.

[00:50:27]So this is that copper one. And this one's actually decent. It's the best of the four materials I tried.

[00:50:34]>> You can see it. It's not as bright as mercury, but it's pretty good. Like >> Just goes to show you, mercury is um or not mercury, uh copper is known for its conductivity, but conductivity alone is not enough. Surface chemistry matters, geometry matters, contact mechanics matter.

[00:50:53]>> I think this one's pretty interesting.

[00:50:57]Now, I really really would like to find a way to uh to do this effect with a non-toxic metal alloy like a galinstan.

[00:51:05]Uh here I've got a vial of that.

[00:51:06]>> Okay.

[00:51:06]>> Uh galinstan metal here. It's It's a uh It's liquid at room temperature, and it's it's mostly gallium. But as you can see, it wets glass. So if if the metal wets glass, well, it's not going to work. Uh not only can you not see the effect, this would actually just completely short it out. So I I feel like there's got to be a way to do it.

[00:51:23]Uh you know, you could put a coating on the glass, but of course that would completely change the triboelectric properties. So you have to really carefully engineer something, but >> So this comes up a lot. People just say just substitute safer material, like in this case not using uh mercury. And yeah, mercury works cuz it doesn't wet glass. This does. So sometimes the whole just replace the hazardous thing doesn't work cuz then it you're just not going to get a desired effect at all. Cuz sometimes the hazardous material possesses unique physical properties. I mean, mercury's got high density, it's liquid, it's conductive, and it doesn't wet the glass. Finding something else with all four of those things is hard.

[00:52:08]>> Yeah, I I really like to come up with a, you know, a non-toxic version of this to even sell just cuz it's it's such an amazing little demonstration. So, yeah, man, that's something I'll probably work on.

[00:52:20]But, yeah, that's about all I have for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed it, and uh be sure to stay tuned for future videos.

[00:52:27]>> Uh that was amazing. It's fascinating seeing how small-scale physics scales across differing engineering discipline.

[00:52:35]So, the same themes keep showing up like contamination determining performance, whether it's in plasma tubes or reactor coolant chemistry. That's definitely true. Vacuum quality still matters.

[00:52:48]Materials interfaces are a huge deal like mercury and glass playing well in this particular configuration. And geometry absolutely controls physics just like when you look at um laminar versus turbulent flow in your reactor coolant system, and when you're looking at all of those zigzaggy bends here. And I love that historical science from 1675 still remains relevant today cuz that connects directly to plasma displays, fluorescent lamps, semiconductors, and fusion research. That's cool. And I love seeing Styropyro's attitude and curiosity with this 1675 contraption. That's awesome. Thanks so much for the recommendation, and thanks so much for watching. I'll see you next time.