How Are Snap Pops Made?

[00:00:01]They came to Santo Antônio Dumont in Minas >> [music] >> Gerais to see how snap pops are made.

[00:00:14]>> [music] >> Shall we check it out?

[00:00:22]>> [music] >> This here is pure luxury. Every corner of Brazil has a different name for this.

[00:00:34]Estalo, estalinho, biriba, biribinha, track, track, damassa, even old ladies fart. The official name on the box is estalo de salão. And we even made a video to see if the little biriba is actually dangerous, but we still needed to go straight to the source and see how the snap pops are made.

[00:00:54]The biggest manufacturer of snaps in Brazil and even in the Americas is this one, Fantasmina. They were the first to automate the production of snaps in Brazil.

[00:01:04]And today they manufacture 4 million snap pops per day in Santo Antônio do Monte in Minas Gerais, which is the national capital of fireworks.

[00:01:13]But what goes in here?

[00:01:15]Is there gunpowder in it? Is it safe if it explodes just by pressing it?

[00:01:21]How do they make it without blowing everything up?

[00:01:25]>> [music] >> I'll start by answering one of the questions that came up the most here. Is there gunpowder inside the snapper?

[00:01:31][music] No. The main raw material of the snapper, the most expensive of all, is silver. [music] Yes, that's silver, the same kind that's in spoons, coins. Even the silver they use here is recycled.

[00:01:42]And it comes precisely from things that people abandon, don't use anymore, like old coins, for example. [music] So, when you pop a snap popper, you might actually be using your grandmother's old fork without even knowing it. Right in the factory. That's what this is, pure silver, which they call fine silver, means there are no other substances in it. [music] And it's really cool to look at this metal up close because it's very bright. You can understand why silver is used to make jewelry.

[00:02:09]But it's not just mixing this with stone that makes it explode. [music] No.

[00:02:13]What they need to make here is a salt called silver fulminate. The first step of the process is to mix this silver with nitric acid like The idea here is to create a salt called silver nitrate. You've probably heard of it. It's widely used in photography.

[00:02:30]There's also a medicine >> [music] >> that's dropped in the eye and it's used to make mirrors.

[00:02:35]The next [music] step is to react the silver nitrate once again with nitric acid.

[00:02:39]But now with alcohol, with ethanol. The reaction releases a lot of heat. It's exothermic and and we can already see the silver fulminate forming at the bottom like curdled milk.

[00:02:51]>> [music] >> To stop the reaction, they place the glass, this Erlenmeyer flask, in ice water and then dissolve the fulminate in ethanol. You can never work with it dry.

[00:03:00][music] It always has to be dissolved or wet.

[00:03:04]>> Fool.

[00:03:04]>> Fulminate derives from the Latin fulmen, meaning lightning or thunderbolt.

[00:03:09]We just have to remember that when something is destroyed, it's like it was struck down. It's a salt that when it gets impacted or heated, releases energy very quickly.

[00:03:19]In a snap.

[00:03:21]And the magic of this thing, what's really interesting, is that it doesn't burn. The fulminate simply decomposes. It breaks apart and its molecule, all of a sudden, turns into silver, carbon dioxide, and nitrogen. This happens very quickly because it doesn't need anything around it. It doesn't need oxygen from the air, for example. Unlike fire, basically, you trigger the fulminate and it breaks apart into smaller molecules.

[00:03:47]Of course, this substance can't go into the poppet in its pure form, [music] especially because only a minimal amount is used. It's about a milligram of silver fulminate for each snapper, which would be a gram of fulminate divided by 1,000. So, in practice, the fulminate [music] needs to be around something that gives it volume. That's good for throwing and that creates some friction when it hits the ground. And that's where those little stones come in that we see when the snapper pops.

[00:04:16]I always thought that what was inside the snapper was sand.

[00:04:19]But when I got here, I found out it's not quartz. [music] These little stones are ground up rock.

[00:04:25]And if you look closely, you can see that it's much purer, much cleaner than sand.

[00:04:30]The grains are also much bigger. And when they get here, they go through a vibrating sieve, which is to select the stones of the exact size. This will be important later to put in the machine.

[00:04:41]Check out how cool this machine works up here. I'm going to pour in the raw quartz that arrived, and whatever is too big gets stuck on top and is thrown over here, which is good. If it's in the middle, it falls here.

[00:04:54]While the fine stones pass through the sieve below and exit elsewhere.

[00:04:58]Now, the fun part starts. It's time to mix the quartz, the little stones, with the fulminate. It's a very delicate operation, and everything has to be done manually. That fulminate dissolved in alcohol will be mixed with a kind of glue, which is dextrin. This is important so it sticks well to the quartz.

[00:05:18]This mixture will be poured over the little stones, and then with very precise movements, the liquid will stick to the quartz in the end.

[00:05:28]We'll have a kind of sand with a very thin layer of silver fulminate, which is still wet with a lot of alcohol.

[00:05:35]It might look like a giant firecracker ready to explode, but that's not the case. Here, it's at the right moisture level to work with.

[00:05:42]It's still damp. There's still a bit of alcohol, so it doesn't explode.

[00:05:45]Actually, put it in your hand, you can feel that it's really cold. Here at the factory, the name they give to this is massa. Now, this mixture needs [music] to dry always very carefully so it doesn't explode.

[00:05:57]Before I show you the machine's work, I'm going to show you how they used to do it in the old days.

[00:06:04]A person would wet their finger in coffee to get a grip, make a paper channel, take the mixture, which was made with river sand itself, >> [music] >> and press it.

[00:06:15]A person could make about a thousand poppers a day.

[00:06:19]That was what was made by hand.

[00:06:21]And now we're going to see this one being made.

[00:06:26]Paper that wraps the popper arrives here in this 250 kg and the machine will divide it into several smaller rolls. The width varies according to the size of the popper they want to produce.

[00:06:38]>> [music] >> Here, we remove the safety guards to make filming easier. It's very satisfying to watch these little blades working. I asked them if it was a dismantled box cutter, but no, they're razor blades.

[00:06:58]>> [music] >> The mixture will be placed in this reservoir down here.

[00:07:03]There's a dispenser that measures the exact amount and puts it inside the machine.

[00:07:09]After that, this part of the machine holds strips [music] of paper and the little tubes will release a small amount of mixture where each snap [music] will be formed.

[00:07:18]These plates like this one press everything to seal the package.

[00:07:21]Watch how [music] it works. They are drop shaped, pulls the close against each other, and that's what forms [music] that little tail on the snap.

[00:07:31]I'm I'm really simplifying [music] things here because inside the machine there are 26 plates, one on top of the other, that [music] gradually close until they reach the right pressure.

[00:07:41]Each little squeeze we see on the tail was made by a plate.

[00:07:45]Machines can make 30 or even 50 pops per cycle, >> [music] >> and adding up all the lines in the factory, the production can reach up to 30, 3,000 [music] firecrackers per minute.

[00:07:58]Doing the math per minute, that's about what a a person used to take a whole month to >> [music] >> The main purpose of the snapper is to be thrown on the ground, explode, and make a cool sound. So, this needs to be really well wrapped with the right paper because the sound of the paper tearing is one of the things that makes this sound cool to hear. So, there's even a certain pressure in the packaging for the popper to work well. And here, at the end, they do a quality test, which is simply measuring the volume, measuring the intensity of the popper's sound. Let's see if it's working.

[00:08:36]>> [music] >> Here, on the other side of the machine, the poppers are already going to be bagged. [music] So, there's a plastic roll that comes down, and it's heated to seal the packaging. But, there's a secret.

[00:08:53]There's a very sharp screw here that pierces each little bag.

[00:09:00]This happens because the dough is still moist. If I take a little bag like this and throw it on the floor, it won't burst. It's intact.

[00:09:09]This is important because they can transport them, toss them from side [music] to side, and there's no risk of the poppers getting damaged.

[00:09:17]>> [music] >> And because of the hole, little by little over time, this bag loses moisture, and the poppers get activated, ready to explode.

[00:09:28]Because of all this, the temperature and humidity of the entire environment are controlled. See, when it's raining a lot, for example, they have to lower the humidity in here so it doesn't affect the paper or the poppers. And when it's very dry, the system does the opposite.

[00:09:43][music] It increases the humidity to maintain ideal conditions.

[00:09:49]Here's the reason for the name of the Fantasma factory. It's because in the beginning all the poppers were white.

[00:09:56]They looked a little like ghosts, but now they make [music] them in various colors.

[00:10:02]Let's pack it.

[00:10:04]>> [music] >> This little bag, this machine, is a carton. It takes a folded box, pulls it open, and puts the bag of poppers inside. And there several levers that close the packages as if they were fingers.

[00:10:17]And in the end, everything goes into a bigger box.

[00:10:22]My challenge here is to pack without the machine beating me.

[00:10:26]>> [music] [music] >> Well done.

[00:10:48]I even have hair in this package.

[00:10:50]Now I've got the hang of it.

[00:10:53]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Now, a question that came to us, if this box falls on the ground, if it takes a few hits, and it explodes, catch fire, blow up all at once.

[00:11:21]>> [music] [music] >> Didn't think I made it with Manual do Mundo, did you?

[00:11:40]Box here got dented and got a tear.

[00:11:43]But I think the little firecrackers didn't even go off.

[00:11:49]But what if we throw it on something that catches fire?

[00:11:54]Could this actually start a fire if we put it on something really flammable, but really flammable like gunpowder?

[00:12:03]>> [music] [music] >> But then, I burned. That wasn't real gunpowder, right?

[00:12:19]You put coffee powder there to throw the firecracker on top.

[00:12:31]>> [music] [music] >> Was it gunpowder or not?

[00:12:43]But isn't this dangerous for the body?

[00:12:45]What if it explodes close to our skin?

[00:12:50]>> [music] >> The sand bothers a little.

[00:12:55]But I didn't feel anything.

[00:12:58]That black part that's left behind In fact, we did a test on Manual do Mundo in the pocket, and I thought it was a little burned. They explained to me that it isn't. It's a little bit of silver and carbon left as a result of the chemical reaction.

[00:13:10]You could see that it's really safe. But yes, there's one thing you shouldn't do like which is to take apart the poppers to make a giant firecracker.

[00:13:20]That's very dangerous. We've already shown that on Manual do Mundo.

[00:13:23]But today we're in a more controlled situation. So they made with the raw material they already have here, three huge firecrackers weighing 150, 200, and 250 g each. That way we can understand the explosion size without trying to recreate it ourselves. Let's see.

[00:13:39]>> [music] [music] >> Here we go.

[00:14:06]>> [music] >> The big risk here is that since this is a much bigger explosion, these little [music] rocks can fly into your face, or rather they can fly into your eye. So, don't try this at home, okay?

[00:14:28]>> [music] >> Very good. Okay.

[00:14:36]From now [snorts] on, every time you hear that little sound, you'll remember that you watched it on Manual do Mundo.

[00:14:44]And found out exactly how the Biribinha is made. Does that deserve a subscription to the channel? [music] It sure does.

[00:14:52]If you made it this far, you must want to see explosions, right? Once in the Super Cometa series, I think it was about 15 years ago, we showed how Nervosinho powder is made.

[00:15:02]It's a powder that explodes if you touch it.