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Making an atomic trampoline [video]
- somat 2y agoA thought I had when I saw the original Steve Mould video, and this video made me remember it. What happens if you just use glass for the bouncing surface? I was reading about the materials and I am not sure what property contributes to it's bounciness, but I think it is tensile strength(but it may be surface hardness). and regular glass has a slightly lower tensile strength than these amorphous metallic structures, fused quartz has a higher tensile strength, and I was unable to find out what tempered glass is, but I suspect tempered glass would tend to shatter if a small hard ball was bounced off it. Anyway, I was unable to form a good hypothesis as to what would happen, but I did find that mcmaster-carr sells fused quartz disks if anyone wants to try. https://www.mcmaster.com/products/glass-discs/ultra-high-temperature-quartz-glass-rods-and-discs/?s=glass-discs https://www.mcmaster.com/products/glass-discs/ultra-high-tem...
- nabilhat 2y agoMcMaster also sells discs of tool steel and glass bearing balls... and carbide, and ceramic, etc. What if the bearing ball was carbide, even harder? What would happen if you reduced the hardness of a steel ball, which usually only requires normal kitchen oven temperatures? What happens if the materials switch places, say a hardened tool steel disc and glass ball? Anyway, lots of options to safely experiment with material science concepts in very accessible and tweakable ways! No beryllium or foundry equipment required. I do think the massive, well fitted, rigid surface backing up the disc is important to constrain what this is demonstrating - plastic vs elastic deformation.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoSteve Mould's video: https://youtu.be/QpuCtzdvix4 https://youtu.be/QpuCtzdvix4 Grand Illusions original video: https://youtu.be/EzFjZJEAt18 https://youtu.be/EzFjZJEAt18
- DoctorOetker 2y agoWhat counts is not specifically hardness or elasticity, but the hysteresis loop up to the stress and strain involved for a ball of a certain mass falling from a certain height.
- gcanyon 2y agoNile Red never ceases to amaze with his technical competence. If I tried to do something with beryllium I'd be dead. And the trampoline would fail.
- wizardforhire 2y agoYeah, it’s nice he’s taking safety seriously finally!
- astrange 2y agoThere's a trend in his videos where he can barely smell things that everyone else notices, so I always wondered if he burned his nose out on an experiment. (The other thing I wonder is, does he just keep all that equipment around that gets used like once a year?)
- rowanG077 2y agoHe has a pretty large lab you can see in some of his videos. It's not like any of his equipment is massive. I expect he can keep everything around.
- j_bum 2y agoIt’s also possible that it’s COVID-19 related. I lost a large swath of my olfactory palette in 2021 when I contracted COVID, but recovered some after a few months. Still to this day, I struggle to taste different foods, which is a bit painful because of how excellent my partner is at cooking.
- raverbashing 2y agoNah I think it's like (a more mild) Electroboom, he only plays it dangerous but knows how to control the risks
- tambourine_man 2y agoHopefully
- JKCalhoun 2y agoI recall a display at the Museum of Science and Industry back in the early 1970's that featured steel balls bouncing on steel plinths not unlike the video. I recall too a pair of angled plinths and the steel balls would appear from an opening in the display, drop and bounce from one plinth to the other before exiting (repeat). No amount of googling has helped shed any light as to "What that was". Perhaps this metallic glass. (Also recall a computer that you could play Tic-Tac-Toe against. The input was a more or less a telephone keypad, the display large neon X's and O's. Seven year old me, or thereabouts, was fascinated to read that the computer had never yet lost.)
- geon 2y agoIn the 70s only thin foil or wires could be produced. The alloy in the video was invented in 1992. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_metal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amorphous_metal
- Vecr 2y agoPossibly computer controlled bumpers? Making the movement imperceptible would have been hard, but I think possible. Or air jets/magnets, you could do those.
- perdomon 2y agoI wish he'd just talk normal instead of inflecting his voice in that robotic way.
- JKCalhoun 2y agoI expect it's more like how people often inflect differently when reading from a script, or if they're self-conscious about public speaking in general.
- bigyikes 2y agoI think it might be partially intentional too. Nigel always has this pristine footage with uniform white backgrounds. It’s almost clinical, and the inflection is kind of on theme with that.
- cypress66 2y agoIn nileblue he doesn't talk like this. So clearly intentional.
- treyd 2y agoYeah I don't find it offputting, it makes sense for the presentation style. Although it's a bit jarring when you can feel like he's paused in the middle of a sentence to move to the next line.
- dvh 2y agoThat's why I cannot watch anime dubs. American voice actors are acting. Original seyuu often talk like normal people (there are exceptions of course, but in dubs it's 100% acting, they use "cartoon voice" which I hate).
- nessguy 2y agoI feel lucky that doesn't bother me when watching his videos. I can sympathize with you somewhat though, because the Food Wishes channel drives me insane for a similar reason. (Chef John has mentioned he speaks that way for his videos on purpose)
- rowanG077 2y agoHe really is delving into metallurgy with his more recent videos. Purple gold and now this. What's next? Intermetallic titanium gold alloy?
- sen 2y agoTransparent anluminium ala Star Trek.
- rowanG077 2y agoToo trivial. You can easily buy it.
- tonetegeatinst 2y agoMono crystalline semiconductor grade silicon bullion growth, now that's a video I want to see done from someone like nile red or breaking taps.
- chii 2y agoAt $14k a piece, buying a vacuum forge just to make one video is an eye popping price to pay! I wonder what else could the forge be used for in future videos?
- nessguy 2y agoI just finished watching his purple gold video and he looked at, but didn't buy, the vacuum forge for that video. I'd actually find it cool if he did a shorter video revisiting the purple gold with his additional experience and the new forge to see if he could manage to do it easily at this point.
- gizmo686 2y agoHe has an entire chemical lab to himself and only puts out a video every few months. Add to that his own salary and all the other overhead of running a channel, and you quickly realize that the per-video cost is already very high regardless of video specific expenses. This piece of equipment still seems like a better investment than the ~4.5oz of gold he bought to make golden grills, which would be about 11k at todays rates.
- DoctorOetker 2y agoHe could cast a ball bearing from the same material, to further decrease the mechanical-to-thermal losses.
- thomascountz 2y ago> Thanks to the advertising and other income he brings in across all of his social media platforms — with 18 million followers and subscribers in total — his company makes a couple million Canadian dollars a year. [0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240901022927/https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/17/world/canada/nilered-youtube-nigel-braun.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240901022927/https://www.nytim...
- femto 2y agoBelow is a table of elements used, ordered by boiling point. Beryllium has the lowest boiling point at 2742K. Zirconium has the highest melting point at 2125K. This means the furnace temperature was greater than 2125K. TIG temperature can easily reach 3000C (close enough to 3000K) [1], more than the boiling point of beryllium. The temperature of the metal slug would rise until it reaches thermal equilibrium through heat loss, the energy loss likely being due to the vapourisation of the element with the lowest boiling point: beryllium. That smoke was probably beryllium vapour. I'm no expert, but I would assume the beryllium vapour would not have made it out of the apparatus. By luck, it would have condensed either before reaching the HEPA filter or on its way through the HEPA filter, even though the HEPA filter was not designed to stop a vapour. Nile Red also had the sense to use a fume cupboard. Despite this, the inside of the apparatus could well have been coated with friable condensed beryllium, which would probably not have been flushed by the argon. If doing this, I'd take additional precautions against condensing beryllium vapour containing the equipment (I don't know what they might be). Maybe it's a case of controlling arc temperature to keep it below the boiling point of beryllium? Maybe a small amount of impurity with a lower boiling point can be added to the mix, so it boils off first and avoids the beryllium boiling? This might also prevent loss of beryllium from altering the composition of the glass? How would the pros handle this risk? I gather there are similar issues with the refining of silicon, in which silicon vapour can cause silicosis. Element Melt Boil Beryllium 1560K 2742K Copper 1357K 2835K Nickel 1728K 3003K Titanium 1491K 3560K Zirconium 2125K 4650K [1] https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2007/AnthonyHo.shtml https://hypertextbook.com/facts/2007/AnthonyHo.shtml
- aDyslecticCrow 2y agoThat is interesting. That explains why the Beryllium vaporized... I'm surprised Nile didn't mention or consider that. I think the simplest solution would be to lower the voltage, aim the arc at the Beryllium, and ensure it and the copper, nickel, and titanium melt together before ramping up the voltage to integrate the Zirconium.
- Metacelsus 2y agoThere could also have been moisture on the beryllium.
- arendtio 2y agoDoes anyone know why he did not try to increase the argon pressure? Wouldn't it help to completely fill the mold with metal?
- tonetegeatinst 2y agoUnsure, but I also wonder why a secondary pump wasn't used to get even lower pressures, like a cryopump or turbo molecular pump. Best guess on that might be cost. I'd assume he was trying to do everything close to the atmospheric pressure even if its an intert gas's, because its less variables. And if a leak occurs you don't have a large pressure difference to help blow the hazardous elements everywhere.
- aDyslecticCrow 2y agoFrom what I can recall from watching most of his videos over the years, he doesn't have any fancier vacuum pumps, so it would indeed be a piece of new equipment he would have to buy. He cycled the argon five times, which is probably plenty without the need for new equipment. He also melted titanium to ensure that any remaining reactive gases were destroyed even after five cycles of argon.
- matricaria 2y agoI'm not sure but often in such scenarios you want to work under a slight vacuum so in case there is a leak, air goes in instead of beryllium vapor shooting out.
- oersted 2y agoThe metal coming out of the bottom of the mold was also a frequent issue, and a more dangerous one. More pressure could be bad.
- emilfihlman 2y agoI was disappointed it wasn't related to low level systems programming haha!
- mikewarot 2y agoI think electrochemical polishing[1] of the discs on both faces could be done without killing anyone. Since everything happens in a liquid, no vapors should evolve. A VERY flat surface might greatly increase the bounce. A surface coating of BAM[2] might also help, by increasing the hardness, and lubricity. I think there's a lot of room to go in increasing the hang time of the bouncing bearing. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_grinding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_grinding [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_magnesium_boride https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_magnesium_boride
- Justin_K 2y agoI was wondering if you go this route, how do you dispose of the liquid after? Once the liquid evaporates, dust is left behind.