HOW YOU CAN MELT METAL IN YOUR HAND !-(experimentally)

 

I am going to tell you that really cool metal called Gallium. It looks a bit like Mercury and it turns into a liquid at about 30 degrees centigrade. That's about 85 Degrees Fahrenheit! (now that's warm) It's often used in the production of semi-conducters and in some LEDs (The More You Know) And when I got mine they came in a plastic test tube. 

 You can see, at room temperature is solid and it won't flow out at all... So, I'm putting mine in a bowl of warm water to raise the temperature, After a few minutes, if you take it out you could see it's actually turned liquid. I'm tipping this out straight onto my hands. Which i've read it's safe to do so. But if you tried this, you may want to consider wearing gloves! And you can see this core from the center of the test tube which didn't have time to melt yet. (let's put it in the bowl of water to melt it) It feels a little wierd and it's sort of blobs together in the palm of your hand...! I decided to pour this out onto the plate to let it cool and see what it looks like. You can see as it's cooling, it starts to form these sort of crystal lumps too!!! It also stuck to my hand a bit which you can easily just scrape back together!  It has left this gray discoloring on my hand which doesn't seem to wipe of easily... But if you use some soap and warm water it cleans of okay! I'm putting this core strait into the bowl of warm water to melt it down. (yay) After a couple of minutes, it looks molten... So, I used a skewer to give it a poke. and it all bunches together under the water And you could move it around and play with it! If I put my hand in to try and pick it up, it feels really weird... And you just can't get a grip of anything. (aw) So i'm gonna use this syringe to suck it up out of the bowl. (yay) And you can see it all getting sucked up. Pretty cool, huh? There's also some water trapped in the syringe which you can turn upside down and squeeze out if you want to. Or, just squirt it all out into the bowl for fun so you can suck it back up again!  And i'll be using this in a minute. If we take a look at the plate, It's gone really solid :o And i can't even pick or scratch it off... So, i'm tipping some warm water over it to melt it Then after a minute or so, I'm clumping it back together So, I can suck it up in my syringe. It's really good fun to play with just squeezing it out And sucking it back up! :D And it almost feels like some kind of extra-terrestrial material that just puddles up in your hand. And if you do spill some on the table (or somewhere else) it'll probably stain it. So you need it to bare that in mind. I wiped this off, And used some warm water and soap to scrub it. You should avoid getting it on your clothes. And it is also corrosive to aluminium, I wanted to see if i could use it to make a rough copy of a key. So, i took a lump of plasticine, And this key from a padlock. Which i pushed in to make a rough mold. I was keeping the Gallium warm in a bowl of water, So i sucked it up. And squirt it into the mold. You can see, it doesn't really flow into the corners of the mold because the surface tension is quite high. So i don't think it will work very well but we'll see what happens... I'm also squirting some onto this paper plate to cool and spreading it out a bit. And the rest of it, i'm just squirting it into this bowl of water which im leaving to cool down! I left it all in room temperature for a few hours to let it solidify. If we have a look at the paper plate, you can see if i bend the plate it peels off quite easily. And we've got this really cool solid shape of metal! When it's thick, is really quite hard. And difficult to bend. And in the middle where it's thin, I could twist it and break it pretty easily. If we take a look at the key I cast, You could see it has got some of the features but it is pretty rough. Is quite cool but you obviously wouldnt be able to use it. It didn't get any definition of the teeth. And the pieces we left to cool in the water did come out pretty well. Some nice shiny surfaces and interesting shapes! So, I decided to melt these bits down again in some fresh warm water. But this piece I decided to dip in so we can actually watch it melt and and drop down into the bowl. I thought it will be also fun to see how it melts with a lighter! This time instead of trying to make a key, I decided to try making the padlock, So I made a basic mold in my plasticine. Sucked up some Gallium, And filled in the mold. I think it will work a lot better than the key. But unfortunately, I didn't have quite enough Gallium to fill the entire mold so I had to make it a bit smaller. At the moment, i'm leaving it to cool but you'll be able to see what it looks like in my next video about Gallium which will be coming out soon. If you got any suggestions for something you like to see me make out of Gallium, you can let me know in the comments below! And if you are a subscriber to my Blog , and want to get notified every time I launch a new Blog . I hope you've enjoyed  this blog .