"That planet has oceans filled with solvent and an atmosphere filled with explosive gas. Nothing could live there." -What an alien on Titan might say about Earth.
That´s totaly on point i once throw a gas cartridge into a fire. It made a "pling pling" sound that gets faster and faster, then it explodes and shot the can 20m in to the air.
1:09 Oh man...I was watching this while salvaging 18650 lithium batteries out of a laptop...when I heard that tiny "BZZZT!" I about threw the laptop clear across the room thinking one of the batteries was about to vent or explode.
A high school student first did this in 1978 - 1979. He won the physics division at the International Science and Engineering Fair in San Antonio, Texas in 1979. I think he got 3rd overall. He did it for both propane and natural gas. Jearl Walker wrote about it in his Amateur Scientist feature in Scientific American in October or November of 1979. If I remember correctly it was an issue that had a dung beetle on the cover. He called it "Flame Propagation in a Reversed Atmosphere."
huh, my Highschool spent $80 million on "college level science labs." But we weren't allowed to use them outside class. Heck, in AP busywor----I mean chemistry, we never even used the lab stations *IN* class, except as akward desks; it was considered too dangerous. They also spent $50mil. on labs for the Middle school....and we didn't use those either. So basically an "Exemplary District" just meant less gangs, not a good education.
I wonder if its possible to identify gasses by the way sound propagated through it, like the nodes in a kundts tube... would they be different enough to identify different types of gasses?
@@dangoldbach6570 I think that would be for the most part impractical because gas always expands and spreads to fill a volume untill it cant expand anymore. The only way i can see this application being feasable is if you have gasses iscolated in various containers.
Science with Katie im ok with things below the LEL and above the UEL. It's knowing and avoiding bad things in that middle ground of "explosive range" that gets a little.... interesting.
Please underemphasize -explosion- . There has been such a silence from Cody for the past week, and on B-lab, I thought he'd gotten some youTube super-strike or something.
I mean this is the same guy who showed us to refine f*cking Uranium ore and hasn't yet put up a video about how to deal with radiation sickness. I was definitely scared that his vacuum chamber was going to explode though.
And then there’s the implication that there could be life on a methane planet that stores energy as an oxidizing agent, rather than a reducing agent as our food is. Edit: If anyone has any ideas for what might take the place of carbohydrates or lipids in a reducing environment, let’s talk.
Creatures on Titan or some such then could use methane and maybe some other chemical like hydrogen sulfide and use them for hydrolysis on water to make oxygen
Are we talking about adapting life from Earth to live on Titan or life that started out on Titan? If life is starting out on Titan, I see no reason why they would need to generate oxygen. Just react the methane and H2S together. You can break a lot of conventions if you can ignore the history of life on Earth. If it is life that started on Earth and moved to Titan, then that might work.
Both substrate molecules and sources of energy are needed for Life. For energy, peroxides and superoxides spring immediately to mind, but Florine and other halogens would also make for some reactions that might be useful. There can be some low-energy reactions by re-arranging simple and complex hydrocarbons, even in the absence or light. However, to make the variety of reactions which Life seems to enjoy, I'm thinking more of Sulfur and Phosphorous.
FarmCraft101 lol, no but i def started wincing as more and more air entered the chamber without igniting. A few more seconds, and there def could have been a spectacular show lol
Nope. I was completely relaxed watching the entire video. Never expected an explosion because the air is only 21% O2, and the pressure in there is only ~510 mmHg of propane. The explosive limits of propane are 2.37-9.35% in air, so Cody would've had to let in a massive amount of air to even have a chance of a detonation. Of course, seeing the results of that would have been kind of fun... as when in doubt, more C-4!
@@jacobkudrowich It is. If two people try an experiment and one dies, the only video that goes up is the successful one while the other person doesn't live to do so. From all the info we have it seems like the experiment is 100% safe since we've never heard of anyone dying from it.
I'm not surprised that air injected into the propane would not burn. Experimenting with potato canons, if the mixture is too propane rich, it just won't light. A bit of air injected into straight propane would be a very rich mixture!
But wouldn't you expect there to be a gradient from lean to rich from the tube of compressed air to the propane? Just like if you had a regular atmosphere and injected fuel, the gradient starts at the nozzle to be very rich, and tails off to lean in the atmosphere. Maybe the problem is that there isn't a perfect gradient. The two substances just don't mix together fine enough to get them to react at a large scale, and by the time they mix together well, the ratio is all off
Matthias Wandel That would be true if he was trying to burn all of the propane at once. But since he was only trying to get a flame it would work just like a torch and slowly consume the propane. Just like if it was full of oxygen and he was trying to burn the propane it would slowly consune the oxygen and burn as a flame without the explosion. Btw a spud gun needs extremely rapid oxidation of the fuel (explosion) to work. Which is why you want a good air:fuel ratio. Too much in either direction and it won't work. I would say that a good ratio to start at would be around 13:1.
TheSpyFishMan thats a good point. Maybe if Cody moves the spark a bit further away from the tube it might ignite. Not sure though because the pure oxygen lit fine. So maybe oxygen in the compressed air is too diluted to sustain a flame. Maybe higher pressure would provide enough to get ignition but he would have to put a diffuser in there or the pressure would blow the flame out.
TheSpyFishMan also propane is heavier than air so it could be that since the propane is all at the bottom of the tank it is drowning out what little oxygen there is in the compressed air. Or it could be forcing it upwards too fast to get good mixture.
I think if he added a mixing nozzle to the end of the tube that mixed the propane and air together really well, like you have on the end of most blow torches, he might get it to light. That would eliminate at least one variable and so he could focus on the ratio of air to fuel and not worry about the amount of mixing that is happening.
+Multi Gaming I think I am not dependent on some few hundred views possible coming from commenting on other videos :D We are doing about 7M views on HPC month so no need to use my time on fishing some comments.
Multi Gaming Don't be an asshole, the hydraulic press channel is massive and wouldn't benefit from that tactic in any appreciable way. If anything they are trying to establish a back and forth with Cody possibly for some sort of mail collaboration or idea sharing, and you're in here messing it up for fans of both channels because you can't help but act like a douche.
That last part would be really cool to have in a scifi movie, like a spaceship has been half blown up, so there's lots of exposed wires and stuff, and they have to emergency land on Earth, so in space all the exposed wires glow purple, but as they get deeper and deeper into the atmosphere sparks start to form :)
Yo I just spent 10 mins watching an incredibly pleasant guy mess around with fire and I’m better for it. So glad this came across my recommendeds during Corona 2020. I needed this more than almost anything else. Can’t wait to go through the archive!
Or would it be less intense, because the electrons don't need to impart as much energy to the air molecules to jump across the gap? Cody? Science required!
That last part was really cool showing how in a vacuum the plasma glow from the electrons surrounded the entire conductor until the air created created paths of lesser resistance
The propane flame was likely flickering because the regulator does not put out a steady, consistent pressure. The friction of the mechanical system causes a slip-stick condition, which in turn causes rapid opening and closing of the valve opening to attempt to balance out the downstream side pressure vs the diaphragm pressure. This may be instead of or in addition to valve movement due to flex in the system, nothing is ever what we would call a rigid assembly. You end up getting a barely noticeable pulsing in most instances, which is much more noticable under low pressure/low flow situations.
@@slavichwalker9856 you are correct. In welding this term is called a neutral flame. It's used to cut steel and other ferrous metals. He created a small scale oxy-fuel torch. Granted something on this minute of a scale has no effect cutting, but it still looks nice.
Amazing video, glad to see you back!! It really sucks what youtube did to you, i can understand if you had trouble coming up with new ideas when you always have doubts in the back of your mind - "propane is flammable, will i get a strike for this??" They've really harmed their platform by tormenting their best content creators. Anyway, glad to see another vid. This was an awesome idea!
You'll make hydrogen chloride (which becomes hydrochloric acid when dissolved in water) and some mixture of carbon chlorides, predominantly carbon tetrachloride. Neither product should be released into the atmosphere: they're both highly toxic, HCl is corrosive and CCl4 destroys the ozone layer.
Hi, Nurdrage. :) There's a lot of such videos on YT but they aren't very popular so it's not easy to find them. I'd like to see chlorine burning in hydrogen. It should look pretty much like oxygen burning in hydrogen but still...
In normal situations, we burn propane in an oxygen environment. This was oxygen in a propane environment. The flame chemically is identical no matter which of the two situations. But, the situations are what make it inverse.
Having grown up not allowed to go to any school it blows my mind how much people cry about having access to books and school and how it wasn't enough for them. It's like having a hammer and just sitting with your arms crossed "nobody is making me excited to hammer! The system let me down!"
Propane is very particular about its air:fuel ratio for combustion. It's been a few years since I was really into spudguns and knew all this stuff by heart, but as I recall it just won't burn if the mixture is more than roughly half the stoichiometric ratio by volume. A stoichiometric mix is ~4% propane in air, iirc it just won't burn above roughly 10% (Again, it's been a while, it might be as high as 15 or 20%, but it really doesn't like burning rich.) Those are for well mixed combustion gases, of course, which is different than your setup. In any case, methane is more forgiving, and hydrogen even more so, if you ever wondered about lighting a match on Saturn.
Jason Patterson explosion limits make for interesting reading, especially when you get to real nasties like acetylene. I stopped using it at work for severance cutting, propane works just fine and is way cheaper, and much safer.
I have a wood stove, and a very similar thing happens when I close the air vent. My stove has little air holes in the top of the firebox to pull oxygen into it and help it burn cleaner. When I close down the vent, it starves the fire of oxygen and the flame goes out. That is exept for some little flames by the air holes. It almost looks like a barbq burner.
Everybody who ever had chemistry in high-school has probably thought about this experiment. - It takes Cody to actually do it. Very exciting, very interesting.
Sorry to burst your buble, but there's a number of videos doing the same and many people did it or witnessed it being done by others. It's not really something exotic, but kudos to Cody for using his number of subscribers to spread the knowledge.
No, actually it's not. See my comments above. This isn't science, and it isn't interesting. It's stupid. It reminds me of stunts done by Grant Thompson, "The King of random". Occasionally he does something with merit, but more often than not it's like this. "Jeez, I wonder what would happen if I put 10,000 volts across a beaker of mercury with a Tide laundry pod suspended in it." This "burning oxygen" is about on that level. A quick dry lab, a thought experiment would tell you that the idea is crap.
Cody had me very nervous with this one. So much could have gone wrong. Even though he doesn’t advertise the safety measures he takes all the time, I’m glad he’s conscious of the risks.
The ending made me think. Would the electric arc form from a greater distance under higher pressure? And would we need more insulation on wires if the atmospheric pressure was larger.
gabest4 It's indeed the opposite, with lower pressure (so less air) the electrons can flow more "freely" and arc longer, that's how you can create plasma with a vacuum chamber (and infact at the start what he show was primarily plasma), if you have a big voltage like at least 5kV-10Kv (10 Kv it would start to be risky for the radiaction produced) and a vacuum chamber with strong vacuum like 10^-6 torr, even with a small chamber you will see the air will be hot enough to be plasma and it will glow like a nebulosa, fascinating stuff (and with that you are close to an actual Farnsworth fusion reactor,just need deuterium and protection and a conductive ball with the negative pole to attract electrons in the centre), hope you find this useful
well neon lights, fluorescent lights, mercury lights, x-ray lamps, sodium street lamps, etc etc etc all work with very low pressure tubes, so..... probably not.
You should see what sound sounds like in different atmospheres. Like have a steel ball drop in our atmosphere and then have the steel ball drop in a co2 atmosphere, propane atmopshere, helium, sulferhexaflouride, hydrogen, ect... I think that would be pretty awesome.
For sound generation to differ due to the gas used you need a sound source that involves the gas itself, like a whistle, not a large piece of metal, which will vibrate just the same.
Mark Tillotson the metal would vibrate the same but the vibration in the air that we hear would be different due to the atmosphere it is in, so it would sound different.
Im in the "same sound" team aswell. The wave length and travel times will be different in a denser or thinner gas, but as long as its only a carrier, the frequency will be the same
5:58 kinda weird that 21% oxygen in propane atmossphere won't burn yet propane burns in a 21% oxygen atmossphere. must have something todo with how the whole thing is getting mixed or something? i dont really get it tbh
The lower limit for Propane to oxygen combustion is 1:2.1, and the upper limit is 1:9.5. Since he is adding only 21% oxygen to the cylinder, the area where the gasses mix is effectively WAY too rich for combustion. Had he kept adding atmosphere to the cylinder, eventually enough O2 would have built up that the area where gas was added would be just lean enough to support combustion and he would have gotten a rather sooty, but sustainable flame. Because not all the O2 would be consumed by the flame, the concentration in the cylinder would continue to rise while the flame burned. You know, until suddenly the cylinder was just lean enough for all the gas to ignite at once. So...a bomb. A very rich one with very little available energy for destruction, but a bomb nonetheless. We don't reliably know how long he could add atmosphere to that cylinder before he got a flame, and we don't know how big the safety margin is since he has no monitoring equipment in there to measure it. It could have had a flame for 30 seconds before simply going out again, or a flame for 5 milliseconds and a sudden explosion. I fully support him stopping where he did. He has a well-developed sense of self-preservation, that's for sure. [edit: spelling]
Actually I think the answer here might be that the spark here is just not strong enough. I've tried igniting a regular gas torch with a sparker module before, and it is not that easy for the arc to start a flame. Also, forming an arc through a different gas should also lead to a different temperature at the same current, and have a different electrical resistance characteristic.
This is super cool, and the bonus footage is awesome too! Thanks Cody! EDIT: Could you try different oxidizer mixtures? I mean, you tried 20% and something close to 100%, now maybe you could try 40% and 60%? I feel like this would be relatively easy to do with your setup, using some maths and the barometer? I think it would also be interesting to reverse the setup for such different fuel mixtures, like try burning propane in 40 and 60% oxygen atmospheres?
was the pitch/sound of the spark in propane alter due to the minor burning that carbonized the copper or was that a change in the way sound carries through a gas medium? would the sound be different in other gasses? helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), and radon (Rn)?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the difference in pressure would have a huge impact on the sound of the spark (the propane had a pressure of 2/3 atm). Also, even in atmospheric pressure, the spark would have a different sound due to the nature of the gas (if I'm correct, the frequency of the sound depends on its speed, that varies by molecular weight and adiabatic exponent of the gas). Also, it is possible that the spark itself is different, pure propane gas and atmospheric air (N2, O2, CO2, water vapor and other trace gases) having different electric conductances. Please correct any mistakes.
Its all about how the soundwave travels through the medium. Different Gases have different sound traveling speeds, which is why for example your voice sounds funny, when you've inhaled Helium before.
Yes, and the lower the pressure, the greater that possibility, but the lower the pressure and the less total gas-mixture, then the weaker the 'explosion'. Maybe enough overpressure to pop open the lid, but little more. However, the way Cody plays the overall safety odds means that someday he's going to win the lottery. That hacksaw blade came off from the nitro detonation and went into his thumb, not a carotid artery.
Super cool! Stirs my curiosity to see different flames in different gas mix ratios and different atmospheres of pressure! So, you know how some fossilized amber air bubbles have been found to have higher pressure and higher oxygen mix ratios than our current atmosphere of today? I wonder what an ancient flame would have looked like in an atmosphere 1.5-2x ours and with 50% more oxygen (number might not be exact, but they're roughly what a I recall). Not sure about the ratio of other gasses. Lot's of possibilities. Thanks so much for sharing your experiments!
and exoplanets with much more oxygen in their atmospheres might not be conducive to people ever developing fire, as it would be too explosive. lightning would be catastrophic!
much more heat, brighter light and much more dangerous. things that on earth not known as combustibles, would be so in that atmosphere, like pvc plastic
Iv only started yesterday but dinge watched like half of your videos and i am a huge fan. I love the actual explinations on all of the chemistry you do and your mining project is killer. Im sure if you try even half as hard as you do you would be great anyway, but keep up the great work
+John Francis Doe; i think the flame spectrum only changes for incomplete combustion. As long as the ratio is adequate to burn thorough then the color is the same only brightness is affected.
yes, but what would the 21% be a percent of? on Earth, it's 21% oxygen to 79% nitrogen. I guess you can make it 79% helium, for the sake of inert-ness..... or argon....
+Matthhew Alex; doubtful. It wasnt liquified gas, just compressed. A way to test is to blow the compressed gas at a red hot charcoal and see if it blazes up. It shouldnt if only co2 is blowing and rather cooling it off.
Can you burn something in ozone? edit: Could you burn something in ozone Cody? Since the oxygen is more present and the molecule is more instable the flamme should be more active :) I searched for such video on TH-cam but never found any. I could only find combustion with chlorine gas. Anyway, a combustion in exotic gas theme is a cool idea for your channel.
Sorry bad word used: Could you burn something in ozone Cody? Since the oxygen is more present and the molecule is more instable the flamme should be more active :) I searched for such video on TH-cam but never found any. I could only find combustion with chlorine gas.
That was not true vacuum. It was very low pressure and there's a corona forming from the rarified air being ionized. In total absence of air, corona is gone, too. If you want to see larger effects in rarified gas, get a plasma globe. It's essentially the same thing.
I wonder what will happen if you poke through the li-ion battery inside a vacuum chamber. Is shorting the layers enough to melt it because of the electrical current when you factor out lithium oxidation?
What is the chemistry of the "burning " oxygen? I understand burning as to be oxidizing (adding oxygen) to a molecule. There are no open valances in an O2 molecule. Are you not burning the propane in a very small volume?
The chemistry is the same: combustion of a hydrocarbon (propane) in which oxygen combines with the hydrogen to form water and with the carbon to form carbon dioxide. It's just that the sources of fuel and oxygen are inverted compared to our usual experience, the "atmosphere" being the propane pumped into the tank, and the flame of the reaction arising from oxygen supplied through the tube. Think of it as the reverse of an ordinary propane torch, the difference being that here he had to use pure oxygen to get a self-sustaining flame. Air might require a different nozzle design, and pressure and ambient temperature probably matter, as well. Flame dynamics in these conditions might be different, too, but that would be its own study.
The chemical reaction is still the same: the oxygen is the oxidizing agent and the propane is reduced. What is different is the volumes for either are reversed from a normal propane fire.
Maybe because the air is 78% Nitrogen.. mostly inert gas. When you're burning a fuel in open atmosphere it can pull as much of the oxygen as necessary. But with you injecting air into a hydrocarbon atmosphere you're only getting the 22% oxygen or less. And that is insufficient to light
Thats my guess and I am surprised Cody didn't click to it. When you are on earth, the average room contains a huge amount of Oxygen by volume, if very little by percentage. In contrast, in a Hydrocarbon atmosphere with air as the fuel, the oxygen is far rarer. LIKELY the Oxygen is reacting with the Hydrocarbon atmosphere almost instantly (due to the spark) but their is not enough oxygen to make the thing go off. N2 + C3,H8 will is not going to reaction. In fact, given how hard it is to get N2 to react with anything, Cody would need a SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful spark to break those bonds. If he did so, given that Lightning causes NO and NO2 to form, its quite possible Cody could get some form of TEMPORARY ignition of the following source. 8N- Ions + C3H8 = 3CN2 + NH4. And suddenly we realise this reaction is impossible. CN2 is HIGHLY unstable...way more then C3H8. Its reaction with O2 to produce CO2 and NO2 produces the second hottest flame in an oxygen based fire (4,500 Degrees C). This is a lot of energy released very quickly, and given how stable N2 is, it means the C3H8 +N2 reaction is never going to burn.
Yes. Here's the story: when the terrestrial planets initially formed, they were molten, and separated into iron, nickel, and sulfur-rich cores and rocky mantles, a process called differentiation. One thing that happened during differentiation is that less abundant elements got partitioned into the core and mantle. You might think the heaviest elements would have wound up in the core and the lighter ones in the mantle, but it's not quite that simple. What happened is that elements that have a chemical affinity for iron or sulfur wound up in the core, and the stuff that doesn't, didn't. This is one reason the mantle and crust of Earth is relatively rich in radioactive elements, because those huge atoms don't fit into the chemical lattices that iron-bearing minerals form (unlike, say, magnesium and titanium, which fit quite nicely).
I would say it's possible but extremely unlikely due to the rarity of mercury and the commonality of other fluids in mercury's temperature range such as ammonia. It also tends to seep inside of porous solids, and to readily amalgamate with other metals and minerals. It's extremely unlikely, but you might find a mercury lake on the poles of a highly volcanic planet in the habitable zone. But mercury doesn't really exist in the abundance or state of matter needed to create oceans, never mind lakes.
@@jeremyhall9346 In case anyone is coming along to read this later, "Jeremy Hall"'s answer is complete and total pseudoscience nonsense bulshite and is not the reason for the relative abundances of elements we see in the crust today.
I'd like to watch that spark zoomed in a filmed by a HD high scpeed camera. I'm sure it'd be trippy. And no, I'm not just saying that because it's April 20th.
yep it's more or less the same as just burning propane in air, the propane or oxygen is burning as fast as it's coming out so it's not going to be able to make a fuel oxygen mix that would lead to it exploding.
It did not explode for exactly same reason why a candle does not, or a propane burner of any sort. Process of burning is a reaction between two chemicals, mediums... Gasses in this particular experiment. Reaction happens at the rate gasses are mixed. Propane is not something destined to release energy the instant some oxygen touches it. Add a bit of oxygen when source of ignition is present - get a little flame. Add more - get bigger flame. Mix fuel and oxidizer in a proportion same as they react in and then add a source of ignition - get an explosion which is rather a deflagration. Not to be confused with detonation, where reaction is propagated by the shock wave and not heat.
You can find tables online that tell you the ratio fuels will burn, many gases need between roughly 20-35% gas to air to ignite, some are more some are less, if you have less or more than the ratio it will burn, you won't get any kind of ignition, gas stoves have the proper measurement to give you a good flame that can cook food
I guess finding the chart that has all the gases is harder than I thought, I found the ratio for propane which is 2.2% to 9.6% propane to air (assuming that's atmospheric air) so if you have a chamber similar to Cody's and you have 15% propane to 85% atmosphere, on paper it shouldn't burn
TheVexCortex just what I was thinking, most fabricators and metal workers know you can actually shut off the acetylene at the bottle in the middle of a cut and continue it with just oxy.
no no First time hearing that. Does the pressure of the oxygen and the remaining heat actually pull it off? I've only had few experiences with cutting in high school; I wouldn't have thought that could be possible. :x
VGameL0v3e12sF012Ree yes, the oxygen has more than enough pressure to cut. In a regular cut with a torch all you are really doing is using the acetylene flame to heat the metal and then using the oxygen to blow the molten metal away. If you begin the cut on acetylene and get everything out enough, when you shut off the acetylene the metal becomes the fuel source instead with the oxygen feeding it and blowing it out of the way. Most people don’t think it works, good way to make a couple bucks on a bet
I believe that due to the lack of gas to allow the electrons to ionize the gas, they just get emitted in all directions, causing whatever gas they fly through to glow, without creating a spark in the process. This way, the gas near the electrodes glows visibly, since most electrons move through that region.
The arc is electrons flowing between the electrodes. It's visible because an electron spontaneously degrades into a photon (light) and negative charge. I'm leaving something out, like where the charge ends up. The electron's mass goes to the Higgs field, as I recall. Think of it as just going "poof".
I believe this is a bit too specific quantum mechanics, and propably incorrect as well. When electrons emit light, they don't go "poof". The light is caused by electrons travelling through the medium and colliding with the atoms of the gas, raising the energy levels of the electrons orbitting the gas, if not knocking them loose entirely(ionisation). Those electrons that remain or re-enter the atom's orbitals release energy to occupy a less energetic level. This is called an atomic transition and the released energy takes the form of photons, which you see as light.
In a gas(even a fairly thin gas) the atoms are ionized by an electric field(voltage difference across the gap) so that the atoms become + or - ions, similar to the sodium and chloride ions in a saltwater solution.(distilled water does not conduct electricity, it is the salt ions that transfer + and - charges) This ionization is what allows conductivity for significant current flow and the bulk ionized gas is known as plasma. The light emitted from the plasma is caused by electrons falling back to lower energy states releasing that energy difference as a photon. In a strong vacuum where ionized particles are in short supply electrons can be shot straight through space, this is an electron gun and is the principle behind cathode ray tubes.(most famous for classic "CRT" television and oscilloscope screens where the electrons are targeted by magnetic fields to hit various phosphor compounds) The glow you see in the video is coronal discharge, Cody's vacuum is only a moderate [incomplete] vacuum and so there are still some gases present to become excited in the sharp electric field gradient but not enough field strength or plasma to fully bridge the gap and create a proper conductive arc path.
I guess if you were on Titan, and you used a lighter to spark a flame. Regular lighters filled with propane won't work, so replace propane with oxygen. Then an oxygen filled lighter will work on Titan.
It still won't work because Titan's atmosphere is nearly all nitrogen. However if you walked down to a shore of a lake of liquid methane/ethane, where concentration of gaseous methane/ethane is higher as the vapors are being wafted from the lake surface, it will work. Most of Titan's surface is solid and there are only a few lakes in polar regions.
Surely it is the propane that is burning. The flame is confined to the region that is within the flammability limits, outside that is too rich and will not combust.
@@984francis 100% correct. Oxygen is not combustible. The propane is mixing with the oxygen at the nozzle and creating a reaction zone in which the propane ignites. outside of this reaction zone the mixture is too rich (propane) to ignite.
@@theCodyReeder Well under conditions one would consider normal, oxygen cannot burn. Oxygen would only burn if it is in the presence of a more powerful oxidizing agent.
Majorly cool idea! A very low exposure photo of the flame would have been nice such that more of the inner structure of the flame is visible. Also maybe less pressure is needed when the spark is nearer to the outlet. Actually on Titan one would need to do that reverse fire under liquid hydrocarbon but I guess even with propane instead of low condensing methane that would be a diffecult, dangerous and expensive experiment. Furthermore Titans low gravity would influence the flame too, so next time hop on a parabloic flight with a liquid methane contaption. Just joking.
AnataSesaDas Titans atmosphere is mostly nitrogen with only tiny traces of reducing hydrocarbons. An oxygen source probably won't burn there (no reverse flame). Even with the very high density of Titans atmosphere. (Due to the low temperature Titans atmosphere is much denser than the slightly above earth pressure might suggest). So to see a reverse flame I guess you have much better chance by diving beneath the surface of one of Titans chemically strongly reducing methane lakes. (These lakes have solvated into them some ethane, propane and other higher molecular stuff that on Titan otherwise would be solid. Myterious chemistry.) Our reverse fuel "oxygen" is barely gaseous on Titan. Just as it is with nitrogen (Titans main atmosphere is on the brink of self collapse). But when you bring the oxygen with you contained in an only slightly pressurized tank it will be liquid for sure. Whether the release of this oxygen (in liquid state) out of a nozzle into the liquid methane sea leads to a falling or rising temperature, and whether the oxygen stays liquid or not - when not yet ignited, depends on the heat of evaporation, the inversion temperature, (and maybe mixing enthalpy). Interesting exercise to work that out. Calculating if the flame can sustain itself in Titans conditions is much harder. Maybe impossible, requiring an actual experiment. If a self sustaining flame really can be ignited (the low temperature makes this harder & the ~thousand times higher density than on earth makes it probably easier.) Then a self sustaining slightly plasmized gas flame sheet must form that only rips up in separate bubbles above the flame. A sheet ripping too early would rip the ignition source. The ripped sheet above the flame would form bubbles that rapidly re-condense due to heat loss to the environment. While thinking about it here I think this sheet could effectively form a too effective mixing barrier and quench the flame. Low gravity makes big bubbles this is good to prevent ripping apart of the sheet but bad since the mixing barrier becomes thicker. Interesting is also: the smaller the bubbles the faster they re-condense, due to the growing surface to volume ratio. This should make for an interesting visual effect. If I'd need to bet I's say such sub-titan-lake-liquid-oxygen-bubble-flames can't be ignited. But I may be wrong. The next best thing is to blow out "hot" exhaust gas from a pretty conventional heat engine (that internally mixes the agents - strongly preferably in slightly pre-heated gaseous form - or else it might not end well). Then one will have at least these strange suddenly vanishing bubbles for sure. No flame though. Smaller bubbles have higher dynamic friction this makes them seem disappear even more suddenly (beside the accelerated heat loss effect). Collapsing bubbles may make a sound and give off sonoluminescence. Imagine that audiovisual experience in titans night with millions of those bubbles.
Yes, Titan's atmosphere can be described basically as nitrogen. However, there should be enough gaseous methane/ethane at the lake shores so it should work there.
In a parallel universe, Hank Hill sells oxygen on Titan
Abdega oxygen and oxygen accessories
Methane would be the bastard gas...?
👏👏👏👏👏
What's the equivalent of charcoal in this parallel universe
Dio Brando wood
Next step is to try running a model jet engine in a combustible atmosphere with oxygen as the fuel source.
Scott Manley no surprise finding you here :D great idea!
Perhaps in KSP?
lol That'd be awesome! ^_^
... from a safe distance! :-)
*Yes!! Titan SSTO/Spaceplane!!*
"That planet has oceans filled with solvent and an atmosphere filled with explosive gas. Nothing could live there."
-What an alien on Titan might say about Earth.
i'm glad SOMEONE said this
Oxygen isnt explosive its an oxidizer.
We're aliens to them
"It's also way too close to the sun, so close that water turns molten!"
spoofer20 well oxygen is the only thing that oxidizes 🤕
Insurance company: "So, you were blowing air into a propane atmosphere?"
"While trying to burn it, yes."
I don't remember saying that.
The ratio must be maintained
No its oxygen, theres many different things in "air"
Tony. But there was oxygen. Literally an oxygen flame right there on video. Smh
cleanest flame I've ever seen
@Havla Fitta lol.
Mixtape of something uhh... a thing?
Havla Fitta Lmao
Ranger Furby You have the same profile picture that I used to use for a couple of years.
I was going to explain to you why it's cleaner but now I'm onto mixtapes.
"Oh it's making a noise" famous last words right before boom💥
LAMO!
‘LAMO’ lmao
b888
So Ass Laughing Me off?
That’s what they do in Soviet Russia.
That´s totaly on point i once throw a gas cartridge into a fire. It made a "pling pling" sound that gets faster and faster, then it explodes and shot the can 20m in to the air.
@@topsecret1837 Kind of appropriate given the video
I can just imagine we going to titan atmosphere, and when the aliens shoot us, our spacesuit explodes
Splash damage unlocked
Maybe that famous Zeppelin explosion was actually a Titan spaceship
Humanity has become halo grunts.
And vice versa
Like that scene in your all mankind where the guy gets shot and lights on fire inside his suit
Wait, that's a lot of air...
"Well now I'm afraid if I let anymore air in it could cause an explosion"
Ok there it is
Yeah I was waiting for him to make that call too haha
1:09 Oh man...I was watching this while salvaging 18650 lithium batteries out of a laptop...when I heard that tiny "BZZZT!" I about threw the laptop clear across the room thinking one of the batteries was about to vent or explode.
🤣🤣🤣
have you finished picking them all up yet? XD
oh man this made me laugh
Damn, how do you find 18 thousand batteries?
@@LiberalsGettheBulletToo model number
No shocks or explosions? Bogus!
Can you make a light bulb which works in the same way as the spark in vaccum
Haha; nice to see you here Mr.BOOM
Any update on the contest?
But look at those beautiful arcs!
You two should do a collaboration video, that would be amazing
A high school student first did this in 1978 - 1979. He won the physics division at the International Science and Engineering Fair in San Antonio, Texas in 1979. I think he got 3rd overall. He did it for both propane and natural gas. Jearl Walker wrote about it in his Amateur Scientist feature in Scientific American in October or November of 1979. If I remember correctly it was an issue that had a dung beetle on the cover. He called it "Flame Propagation in a Reversed Atmosphere."
It was The Amateur Scientist, November 1979: "Flames in which air is introduced into a flammable gas rather than vice versa" by Jearl Walker
huh, my Highschool spent $80 million on "college level science labs." But we weren't allowed to use them outside class.
Heck, in AP busywor----I mean chemistry, we never even used the lab stations *IN* class, except as akward desks; it was considered too dangerous.
They also spent $50mil. on labs for the Middle school....and we didn't use those either.
So basically an "Exemplary District" just meant less gangs, not a good education.
@@Gabyarg25 Jearl Walker, bet that's a vaguely familiar name for a lot of STEM majors. 😂
it's called a back fire
@@ChadDidNothingWrong how is your school so rich wtf
That's awesome, even the spark made a different noise in the propane atmosphere.
Different density of the gases, similar to what happens with a helium balloon.
@@gorillaau well but sound really cool
I wonder if its possible to identify gasses by the way sound propagated through it, like the nodes in a kundts tube... would they be different enough to identify different types of gasses?
Couldn't that also be because of the difference in pressure?
@@dangoldbach6570 I think that would be for the most part impractical because gas always expands and spreads to fill a volume untill it cant expand anymore.
The only way i can see this application being feasable is if you have gasses iscolated in various containers.
I loved the final minute where the spark slowly starts between the to metal wires, so satisfying to watch
That’s really good advice - a good stopping point in any experiment is right before it explodes. (Unless your aim is an explosion of course).
Science with Katie im ok with things below the LEL and above the UEL. It's knowing and avoiding bad things in that middle ground of "explosive range" that gets a little.... interesting.
Whats the point of an experiment if it doesn't lead to explosions though?
or right after that
I was kind of hoping for a small explosion....
Please underemphasize -explosion- . There has been such a silence from Cody for the past week, and on B-lab, I thought he'd gotten some youTube super-strike or something.
Not gonna lie. I was waiting for the video to cut to a hospital room.
That would definitely happen if he mixed the propane and oxygen just at the right mixture ratio, then fired it up.
It's not Dexter's lab, it's Cody's !
@@udhi_gn3893 It's more likely that he has to go to the hospital because he slips
Peter Auto on butter...
I mean this is the same guy who showed us to refine f*cking Uranium ore and hasn't yet put up a video about how to deal with radiation sickness. I was definitely scared that his vacuum chamber was going to explode though.
7:42 Wow, an arc that's actually _electric blue._ Pretty.
And then there’s the implication that there could be life on a methane planet that stores energy as an oxidizing agent, rather than a reducing agent as our food is.
Edit: If anyone has any ideas for what might take the place of carbohydrates or lipids in a reducing environment, let’s talk.
Creatures on Titan or some such then could use methane and maybe some other chemical like hydrogen sulfide and use them for hydrolysis on water to make oxygen
Are we talking about adapting life from Earth to live on Titan or life that started out on Titan? If life is starting out on Titan, I see no reason why they would need to generate oxygen. Just react the methane and H2S together. You can break a lot of conventions if you can ignore the history of life on Earth.
If it is life that started on Earth and moved to Titan, then that might work.
Pizza rolls
Both substrate molecules and sources of energy are needed for Life. For energy, peroxides and superoxides spring immediately to mind, but Florine and other halogens would also make for some reactions that might be useful. There can be some low-energy reactions by re-arranging simple and complex hydrocarbons, even in the absence or light. However, to make the variety of reactions which Life seems to enjoy, I'm thinking more of Sulfur and Phosphorous.
Theres a movie made about that very concept.. its on Netflix and its.. not the worst..
Cody showed fire. Fire bad. Demonetized
gaige sanders whoosh lol
baby its cold out side...
@gaige sanders if u don't get it y u laugh at it
gaige sanders smh...
It wasn't demonetized, I saw an ad!
Fascinating Cody! Did anybody else find themselves wincing as the sparks went off in the propane? Engage sphincters!
FarmCraft101 lol, no but i def started wincing as more and more air entered the chamber without igniting. A few more seconds, and there def could have been a spectacular show lol
Nope. I was completely relaxed watching the entire video. Never expected an explosion because the air is only 21% O2, and the pressure in there is only ~510 mmHg of propane. The explosive limits of propane are 2.37-9.35% in air, so Cody would've had to let in a massive amount of air to even have a chance of a detonation. Of course, seeing the results of that would have been kind of fun... as when in doubt, more C-4!
No because Cody isn’t Grant Thompson.
iCat816 Grant Thompson doesn't even make videos anymore.
+NSEasternShoreChemist (Glflegolas) this is not for fun its educational, to make you think about the world around you
For a second I was super afraid the air will reach the explosion ratio limit and explode.
I wasn;t because I knew there wouldn;t have been a video at all if that had happened.... ;p not like he was streaming live.
Perfect example of survivorship bias
@@milandavid7223 not really survivship bias at all
@@jacobkudrowich It is. If two people try an experiment and one dies, the only video that goes up is the successful one while the other person doesn't live to do so. From all the info we have it seems like the experiment is 100% safe since we've never heard of anyone dying from it.
@@milandavid7223 Nothing about this has anything to do with survivorship bias
I'm not surprised that air injected into the propane would not burn. Experimenting with potato canons, if the mixture is too propane rich, it just won't light. A bit of air injected into straight propane would be a very rich mixture!
But wouldn't you expect there to be a gradient from lean to rich from the tube of compressed air to the propane? Just like if you had a regular atmosphere and injected fuel, the gradient starts at the nozzle to be very rich, and tails off to lean in the atmosphere. Maybe the problem is that there isn't a perfect gradient. The two substances just don't mix together fine enough to get them to react at a large scale, and by the time they mix together well, the ratio is all off
Matthias Wandel That would be true if he was trying to burn all of the propane at once. But since he was only trying to get a flame it would work just like a torch and slowly consume the propane.
Just like if it was full of oxygen and he was trying to burn the propane it would slowly consune the oxygen and burn as a flame without the explosion.
Btw a spud gun needs extremely rapid oxidation of the fuel (explosion) to work. Which is why you want a good air:fuel ratio. Too much in either direction and it won't work. I would say that a good ratio to start at would be around 13:1.
TheSpyFishMan thats a good point. Maybe if Cody moves the spark a bit further away from the tube it might ignite. Not sure though because the pure oxygen lit fine. So maybe oxygen in the compressed air is too diluted to sustain a flame. Maybe higher pressure would provide enough to get ignition but he would have to put a diffuser in there or the pressure would blow the flame out.
TheSpyFishMan also propane is heavier than air so it could be that since the propane is all at the bottom of the tank it is drowning out what little oxygen there is in the compressed air. Or it could be forcing it upwards too fast to get good mixture.
I think if he added a mixing nozzle to the end of the tube that mixed the propane and air together really well, like you have on the end of most blow torches, he might get it to light. That would eliminate at least one variable and so he could focus on the ratio of air to fuel and not worry about the amount of mixing that is happening.
Really good idea and interesting video!
Fancy seeing you here!
This experiment was really dangerous and could've exploded at any moment. You know what you have to do. You must deal with it.
Propane is dangerous and could attack at any time.
+Multi Gaming I think I am not dependent on some few hundred views possible coming from commenting on other videos :D We are doing about 7M views on HPC month so no need to use my time on fishing some comments.
Multi Gaming Don't be an asshole, the hydraulic press channel is massive and wouldn't benefit from that tactic in any appreciable way. If anything they are trying to establish a back and forth with Cody possibly for some sort of mail collaboration or idea sharing, and you're in here messing it up for fans of both channels because you can't help but act like a douche.
That last part would be really cool to have in a scifi movie, like a spaceship has been half blown up, so there's lots of exposed wires and stuff, and they have to emergency land on Earth, so in space all the exposed wires glow purple, but as they get deeper and deeper into the atmosphere sparks start to form :)
Beacon of Wierd but usually wires are run inside the hull, where there is air. You could get away with it on some ships then
Hence the "half blown up" part :p
@@nerfinator03the hull could be damaged
Yo I just spent 10 mins watching an incredibly pleasant guy mess around with fire and I’m better for it. So glad this came across my recommendeds during Corona 2020. I needed this more than almost anything else. Can’t wait to go through the archive!
Cody's archives are extensive.
What would the spark look like with an air pressure greater than atmospheric?
I was going to ask that too - might increase the yield of nitric acid as well.
it would be more intense due to lower resistance because of more molecules in same space.
Or would it be less intense, because the electrons don't need to impart as much energy to the air molecules to jump across the gap?
Cody? Science required!
When there's a good question, which needs answering... Who you gonna call? Cody Don!
It would be more intense due to inductive reasoning. Or... "Who needs experiments?"
How would it look if you injected pure oxygen into a propane/nitrogen mixture because that would be my idea of a reverse flame
A reverse explosion?
Yeah I feel like that would just explode after enough pressure
@@davecrupel2817 unless you dumped a bunch of oxygen in there it before you lit it it should be ok
he's talking about burning oxygen in a propane nitrogen atmosphere, not mixing all three and lighting it
The nitrogen doesn’t really matter
That last part was really cool showing how in a vacuum the plasma glow from the electrons surrounded the entire conductor until the air created created paths of lesser resistance
4:53 its beautiful
The propane flame was likely flickering because the regulator does not put out a steady, consistent pressure. The friction of the mechanical system causes a slip-stick condition, which in turn causes rapid opening and closing of the valve opening to attempt to balance out the downstream side pressure vs the diaphragm pressure. This may be instead of or in addition to valve movement due to flex in the system, nothing is ever what we would call a rigid assembly. You end up getting a barely noticeable pulsing in most instances, which is much more noticable under low pressure/low flow situations.
Winterfalke I knew it wasn't air current from the flicker, but didn't know what would cause that. Thanks!
A needle valve would probably give much better results.
Winterfalke i hate bitches like you who try to act all smart
Yup... okay. 👍🏻
Von Tajay
If you're upset because you cant understand things, you might try taking up reading.
A solid blue flame
Now we know how they do it in those rpg games
Role-playing games games, LOL
this happens normally with a fire containing no other soot particles like carbon
Seth Eloe 😂😂😂
I think blue flame happens when their is a constant supply of oxygen to the flame. Commonly at the bottom of the flame it is slightly blue
@@slavichwalker9856 you are correct. In welding this term is called a neutral flame. It's used to cut steel and other ferrous metals. He created a small scale oxy-fuel torch. Granted something on this minute of a scale has no effect cutting, but it still looks nice.
This is one of those videos that just make you go: "Damn, that was cool." Thanks for the content, Cody!
this is probably my favorite Codyslab episode. Simple but creative concept elegantly executed!
You know it's going to be an interesting video when Cody is wearing some safety gear
Amazing video, glad to see you back!! It really sucks what youtube did to you, i can understand if you had trouble coming up with new ideas when you always have doubts in the back of your mind - "propane is flammable, will i get a strike for this??" They've really harmed their platform by tormenting their best content creators.
Anyway, glad to see another vid. This was an awesome idea!
Your videos are always so epic. Best random videos you make are always the most interesting to watch
Like the king of random only not shit or a felon
+RumpelForeskin lmaoo
7:07
Ahem, excuse me sir, but how much for the glowstick cotton candy? I must try some.
Any thoughts on trying to burn a hydrocarbon (or hydrogen) in a chlorine atmosphere?
You'll make hydrogen chloride (which becomes hydrochloric acid when dissolved in water) and some mixture of carbon chlorides, predominantly carbon tetrachloride. Neither product should be released into the atmosphere: they're both highly toxic, HCl is corrosive and CCl4 destroys the ozone layer.
Hi, Nurdrage. :)
There's a lot of such videos on YT but they aren't very popular so it's not easy to find them.
I'd like to see chlorine burning in hydrogen. It should look pretty much like oxygen burning in hydrogen but still...
Not sure you would want to just blow those chemical products away with a fan. Now hydrocarbons I'm a Fluorine atmosphere...
HCl is not "highly toxic", its highly acidic, its in your stomach right now not poisoning you at all :)
Hydrocarbons in a chlorine atmosphere makes a sooty mess.
It's amazing how smooth the inside-out oxygen flame is.
Cody, that was one hell of a thought experiment. Really, cool video. An inverse flame? this better trend!
How the fuck a hands on experiment is a thought experiment?
How the fuck is propane reacting with oxygen an 'inverse flame'?
In normal situations, we burn propane in an oxygen environment. This was oxygen in a propane environment. The flame chemically is identical no matter which of the two situations. But, the situations are what make it inverse.
Admittedly, I used that term wrong. Nonetheless, a thought experiment can be carried out into reality. Making it, a real experiment such as this one.
Brilliant, thank you. I only wish my science teacher from school 50 years ago was able to so ignite my curiosity, rather than dampening it.
Having grown up not allowed to go to any school it blows my mind how much people cry about having access to books and school and how it wasn't enough for them. It's like having a hammer and just sitting with your arms crossed "nobody is making me excited to hammer! The system let me down!"
These results are pretty shocking. I'm expecting a heated debate, though I hope it's not an all-out flame-war.
Don't worry, I'll be careful that the door doesn't hit me on the way out.
It's a hot topic
Fire pun.
Someone's a bright spark.
Lol I guess someone had to do it. Flame on!
Man that was so damn cool
It wood be cool to see that spark at the end upclose and in slow motion. Are those individual lines produced by a single electrons?
+trolle02
Shatap yur face.
trolle02 Fixed. Autocorrect in iOS has been shit lately.
So cool
That's just the damndest thing I've seen all week
Propane is very particular about its air:fuel ratio for combustion. It's been a few years since I was really into spudguns and knew all this stuff by heart, but as I recall it just won't burn if the mixture is more than roughly half the stoichiometric ratio by volume. A stoichiometric mix is ~4% propane in air, iirc it just won't burn above roughly 10% (Again, it's been a while, it might be as high as 15 or 20%, but it really doesn't like burning rich.) Those are for well mixed combustion gases, of course, which is different than your setup.
In any case, methane is more forgiving, and hydrogen even more so, if you ever wondered about lighting a match on Saturn.
Jason Patterson explosion limits make for interesting reading, especially when you get to real nasties like acetylene. I stopped using it at work for severance cutting, propane works just fine and is way cheaper, and much safer.
I've had some spudgun experience so was wondering if Cody had the critical mix ratios in mind. Best if no one tries repeating this though.
Once you substitute pure oxygen for air, things are always more interesting and more dangerous, that 80% nitrogen really tames things down.
Just make sure you say hello to the NSA
ether + whippit cartridges. Had a spud gun sized for tennis balls, im quite sure there are still a few up there left in orbit.
I have a wood stove, and a very similar thing happens when I close the air vent. My stove has little air holes in the top of the firebox to pull oxygen into it and help it burn cleaner. When I close down the vent, it starves the fire of oxygen and the flame goes out. That is exept for some little flames by the air holes. It almost looks like a barbq burner.
Everybody who ever had chemistry in high-school has probably thought about this experiment. - It takes Cody to actually do it. Very exciting, very interesting.
Sorry to burst your buble, but there's a number of videos doing the same and many people did it or witnessed it being done by others. It's not really something exotic, but kudos to Cody for using his number of subscribers to spread the knowledge.
No, actually it's not. See my comments above. This isn't science, and it isn't interesting. It's stupid. It reminds me of stunts done by Grant Thompson, "The King of
random". Occasionally he does something with merit, but more often than not it's like this. "Jeez, I wonder what would happen if I put 10,000 volts across a beaker of mercury with a Tide laundry pod suspended in it." This "burning oxygen" is about on that level. A quick dry lab, a thought experiment would tell you that the idea is crap.
I was just thinking "Uh oh, you're going to hit a critical mix RSN" you said "OK I'm stopping now, there's too much air in there." Whew.
Cody had me very nervous with this one. So much could have gone wrong. Even though he doesn’t advertise the safety measures he takes all the time, I’m glad he’s conscious of the risks.
This is one of the most dangerous videos I've ever seen on youtube. Had me worried the whole time. And I've seen a shitload of dangerous experiments
Safety squints engage
hehe
Is there any other way...
Hello, fellow AvE Viewer.
Nuclear_ Nube MINT!
Science: this is safe because reasons
My brain: He should be recording this from far far away
One of your best vids Cody. Thankyou for posting it
The ending made me think. Would the electric arc form from a greater distance under higher pressure? And would we need more insulation on wires if the atmospheric pressure was larger.
gabest4 It's indeed the opposite, with lower pressure (so less air) the electrons can flow more "freely" and arc longer, that's how you can create plasma with a vacuum chamber (and infact at the start what he show was primarily plasma), if you have a big voltage like at least 5kV-10Kv (10 Kv it would start to be risky for the radiaction produced) and a vacuum chamber with strong vacuum like 10^-6 torr, even with a small chamber you will see the air will be hot enough to be plasma and it will glow like a nebulosa, fascinating stuff (and with that you are close to an actual Farnsworth fusion reactor,just need deuterium and protection and a conductive ball with the negative pole to attract electrons in the centre), hope you find this useful
well neon lights, fluorescent lights, mercury lights, x-ray lamps, sodium street lamps, etc etc etc all work with very low pressure tubes, so..... probably not.
Look into vacuum tubes/valves.
You should see what sound sounds like in different atmospheres. Like have a steel ball drop in our atmosphere and then have the steel ball drop in a co2 atmosphere, propane atmopshere, helium, sulferhexaflouride, hydrogen, ect... I think that would be pretty awesome.
I want this.
For sound generation to differ due to the gas used you need a sound source that involves the gas itself, like a whistle, not a large piece of metal, which will vibrate just the same.
Mark Tillotson the metal would vibrate the same but the vibration in the air that we hear would be different due to the atmosphere it is in, so it would sound different.
Qualyn Foreman ^
Im in the "same sound" team aswell. The wave length and travel times will be different in a denser or thinner gas, but as long as its only a carrier, the frequency will be the same
5:58 kinda weird that 21% oxygen in propane atmossphere won't burn yet propane burns in a 21% oxygen atmossphere. must have something todo with how the whole thing is getting mixed or something? i dont really get it tbh
You're right. Look up 'stoichiometry'.
The lower limit for Propane to oxygen combustion is 1:2.1, and the upper limit is 1:9.5. Since he is adding only 21% oxygen to the cylinder, the area where the gasses mix is effectively WAY too rich for combustion. Had he kept adding atmosphere to the cylinder, eventually enough O2 would have built up that the area where gas was added would be just lean enough to support combustion and he would have gotten a rather sooty, but sustainable flame. Because not all the O2 would be consumed by the flame, the concentration in the cylinder would continue to rise while the flame burned. You know, until suddenly the cylinder was just lean enough for all the gas to ignite at once. So...a bomb. A very rich one with very little available energy for destruction, but a bomb nonetheless. We don't reliably know how long he could add atmosphere to that cylinder before he got a flame, and we don't know how big the safety margin is since he has no monitoring equipment in there to measure it. It could have had a flame for 30 seconds before simply going out again, or a flame for 5 milliseconds and a sudden explosion. I fully support him stopping where he did. He has a well-developed sense of self-preservation, that's for sure. [edit: spelling]
Remember oxygen is just an oxidizer its the fuel that you have to worry about
@@NoSubsWithContent it's a combination of the 2 that can be the problem
Actually I think the answer here might be that the spark here is just not strong enough. I've tried igniting a regular gas torch with a sparker module before, and it is not that easy for the arc to start a flame.
Also, forming an arc through a different gas should also lead to a different temperature at the same current, and have a different electrical resistance characteristic.
This is super cool, and the bonus footage is awesome too! Thanks Cody!
EDIT: Could you try different oxidizer mixtures? I mean, you tried 20% and something close to 100%, now maybe you could try 40% and 60%? I feel like this would be relatively easy to do with your setup, using some maths and the barometer? I think it would also be interesting to reverse the setup for such different fuel mixtures, like try burning propane in 40 and 60% oxygen atmospheres?
I *always* have time to stop my homework for an educational video by Cody.
This is pretty interesting!
I had never thought of that.
Du hier?
Techtastisch | Experimente und Lifehacks Seit wann guckt denn der liebe Techi CodysLab? :)
Gefällt mir :)
Hätte nicht erwartet dich hier zu finden :)
Bin aber auch nicht sehr überrascht darüber
are not you technically still burning propane, just in localized area where oxygen is flowing out?
It's a matter of semantics
Your technically burning both, it's a reaction of all 3 combined. He's just controlling the flows of one into the other where they all intersect.
@@troywhite6039this. Burning cannot happen without both.
Fire is just a chemical reaction
was the pitch/sound of the spark in propane alter due to the minor burning that carbonized the copper or was that a change in the way sound carries through a gas medium? would the sound be different in other gasses? helium (He), neon (Ne), argon (Ar), krypton (Kr), xenon (Xe), and radon (Rn)?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the difference in pressure would have a huge impact on the sound of the spark (the propane had a pressure of 2/3 atm). Also, even in atmospheric pressure, the spark would have a different sound due to the nature of the gas (if I'm correct, the frequency of the sound depends on its speed, that varies by molecular weight and adiabatic exponent of the gas).
Also, it is possible that the spark itself is different, pure propane gas and atmospheric air (N2, O2, CO2, water vapor and other trace gases) having different electric conductances.
Please correct any mistakes.
I just like how you are showing that you know periodic table of elements
Its all about how the soundwave travels through the medium. Different Gases have different sound traveling speeds, which is why for example your voice sounds funny, when you've inhaled Helium before.
Tesa Tape i was under the impression that helium made your vocal cords constrict or something like that.
“I can prolly turn down the propane- Ohp THAT was up.”
Jesus Christ, I've done alot of dangerous things, but trying to ignite 10 liters of propane/air mixture in confined space is too much even for me.
The rate was so low from that little tube that there was never a danger of anything close to a flammable stoichiometric mixture.
I'm sometimes "safety third", but in lower pressure, without continous combustion of oxygen it's possible to create stoichiometric mixture.
Yes, and the lower the pressure, the greater that possibility, but the lower the pressure and the less total gas-mixture, then the weaker the 'explosion'. Maybe enough overpressure to pop open the lid, but little more. However, the way Cody plays the overall safety odds means that someday he's going to win the lottery. That hacksaw blade came off from the nitro detonation and went into his thumb, not a carotid artery.
yup, enjoy him while he lasts.
I'll protect you don't worry
this got recommended to me today... i haven't watched your channel since like 2018, feels good to be back
That was just plain neat bud. Thanks a bunch my friend.
Super cool! Stirs my curiosity to see different flames in different gas mix ratios and different atmospheres of pressure! So, you know how some fossilized amber air bubbles have been found to have higher pressure and higher oxygen mix ratios than our current atmosphere of today? I wonder what an ancient flame would have looked like in an atmosphere 1.5-2x ours and with 50% more oxygen (number might not be exact, but they're roughly what a I recall). Not sure about the ratio of other gasses. Lot's of possibilities. Thanks so much for sharing your experiments!
and exoplanets with much more oxygen in their atmospheres might not be conducive to people ever developing fire, as it would be too explosive. lightning would be catastrophic!
much more heat, brighter light and much more dangerous. things that on earth not known as combustibles, would be so in that atmosphere, like pvc plastic
Ill bet there was some very interesting high energy chemistry going on in that spark-in-propane...
Just knocking up some cell precursors?
Iv only started yesterday but dinge watched like half of your videos and i am a huge fan. I love the actual explinations on all of the chemistry you do and your mining project is killer. Im sure if you try even half as hard as you do you would be great anyway, but keep up the great work
To get it in reverse, shouldn't you have used a ~21% propane atmosphere with a 100% oxygen "flame"?
Well would it be so different to stream propane into an oxygen tank w a sparker? I'd still expect the flame to stay at the interface.
AnantaSesaDas But the color etc. might be different.
+John Francis Doe; i think the flame spectrum only changes for incomplete combustion. As long as the ratio is adequate to burn thorough then the color is the same only brightness is affected.
yes, but what would the 21% be a percent of?
on Earth, it's 21% oxygen to 79% nitrogen.
I guess you can make it 79% helium, for the sake of inert-ness..... or argon....
+Matthhew Alex; doubtful. It wasnt liquified gas, just compressed. A way to test is to blow the compressed gas at a red hot charcoal and see if it blazes up. It shouldnt if only co2 is blowing and rather cooling it off.
Can you burn something in ozone?
edit:
Could you burn something in ozone Cody? Since the oxygen is more present and the molecule is more instable the flamme should be more active :) I searched for such video on TH-cam but never found any. I could only find combustion with chlorine gas. Anyway, a combustion in exotic gas theme is a cool idea for your channel.
Of course. And ozone can burn in propane or whatever.
Héphaïx Anon easily. Ozone breaks apart so easily into oxygen that you can use it to burn stuff
Sorry bad word used: Could you burn something in ozone Cody? Since the oxygen is more present and the molecule is more instable the flamme should be more active :) I searched for such video on TH-cam but never found any. I could only find combustion with chlorine gas.
Ozone, nitrous oxide, and fluorine can all support combustion. Seeing what happened if he put N2O into the chamber might be kinda cool.
You should add that edit in the original to stop the flood of people replying with "of course you can"
That was so cool. I was always curious what a sparkle would look like or act in vacuum. More like this please.
gilat6 I've wondered the same thing about glitter...
That was not true vacuum. It was very low pressure and there's a corona forming from the rarified air being ionized. In total absence of air, corona is gone, too.
If you want to see larger effects in rarified gas, get a plasma globe. It's essentially the same thing.
I've wondered this exact thing for decades! Thanks Cody!
I wonder what will happen if you poke through the li-ion battery inside a vacuum chamber. Is shorting the layers enough to melt it because of the electrical current when you factor out lithium oxidation?
Alex Servirog I am pretty sure the lithium would still be oxidized by whatever else is in the battery
A substantial amount of li ion flame is due to H2 production and air's oxygen. The flame would certainly be different
Hank Hill approves of this video... :P
ApacheThunder .... Dammit, Bobby!
I said 'cocaine' not 'propane'.....
Hank hill was angry at this video, fake news
I sell Propane and propane atmospheres.
Hank would say, It's asinine! Now propane burns cleaner and is more cost efficient .
my first thought when i saw this video was "people better be making King of the Hill jokes or im gonna lose my shit"
Cody forgot The Mad Scientist's Code "Any experiment the results in an explosion is a success."
really cool, never thougt of a "reverse flame"... makes absolute sense and looks wonderful
Wow, that sounds intresting!
Wow that’s one of the coolest experiments I’ve ever seen! Very interesting! Thanks Cody ! Take care! Peace from Welland Ontario Canada 🇨🇦
Peace from Hamilton too!
*I sell oxygen and oxygen accessories*
That's good.
Classic seller predatory instinct 😆
The movement of the spark at 9:20 is crazy!
What is the chemistry of the "burning " oxygen? I understand burning as to be oxidizing (adding oxygen) to a molecule. There are no open valances in an O2 molecule. Are you not burning the propane in a very small volume?
The chemistry is the same: combustion of a hydrocarbon (propane) in which oxygen combines with the hydrogen to form water and with the carbon to form carbon dioxide. It's just that the sources of fuel and oxygen are inverted compared to our usual experience, the "atmosphere" being the propane pumped into the tank, and the flame of the reaction arising from oxygen supplied through the tube. Think of it as the reverse of an ordinary propane torch, the difference being that here he had to use pure oxygen to get a self-sustaining flame. Air might require a different nozzle design, and pressure and ambient temperature probably matter, as well. Flame dynamics in these conditions might be different, too, but that would be its own study.
The chemical reaction is still the same: the oxygen is the oxidizing agent and the propane is reduced.
What is different is the volumes for either are reversed from a normal propane fire.
I thought music started playing in the background before you said “what was that noise?”
I always wanted to try that. Thank you.
Great video Cody. Thanks for bringing us along!
I've never been so nervous watching one of your experiments.
Maybe because the air is 78% Nitrogen.. mostly inert gas. When you're burning a fuel in open atmosphere it can pull as much of the oxygen as necessary. But with you injecting air into a hydrocarbon atmosphere you're only getting the 22% oxygen or less. And that is insufficient to light
Thats my guess and I am surprised Cody didn't click to it. When you are on earth, the average room contains a huge amount of Oxygen by volume, if very little by percentage.
In contrast, in a Hydrocarbon atmosphere with air as the fuel, the oxygen is far rarer. LIKELY the Oxygen is reacting with the Hydrocarbon atmosphere almost instantly (due to the spark) but their is not enough oxygen to make the thing go off.
N2 + C3,H8 will is not going to reaction. In fact, given how hard it is to get N2 to react with anything, Cody would need a SIGNIFICANTLY more powerful spark to break those bonds. If he did so, given that Lightning causes NO and NO2 to form, its quite possible Cody could get some form of TEMPORARY ignition of the following source.
8N- Ions + C3H8 = 3CN2 + NH4.
And suddenly we realise this reaction is impossible.
CN2 is HIGHLY unstable...way more then C3H8. Its reaction with O2 to produce CO2 and NO2 produces the second hottest flame in an oxygen based fire (4,500 Degrees C). This is a lot of energy released very quickly, and given how stable N2 is, it means the C3H8 +N2 reaction is never going to burn.
Cody is it possible for a planet to have oceans of liquid mercury?
Yes.
Here's the story: when the terrestrial planets initially formed, they were molten, and separated into iron, nickel, and sulfur-rich cores and rocky mantles, a process called differentiation. One thing that happened during differentiation is that less abundant elements got partitioned into the core and mantle. You might think the heaviest elements would have wound up in the core and the lighter ones in the mantle, but it's not quite that simple. What happened is that elements that have a chemical affinity for iron or sulfur wound up in the core, and the stuff that doesn't, didn't. This is one reason the mantle and crust of Earth is relatively rich in radioactive elements, because those huge atoms don't fit into the chemical lattices that iron-bearing minerals form (unlike, say, magnesium and titanium, which fit quite nicely).
I would say it's possible but extremely unlikely due to the rarity of mercury and the commonality of other fluids in mercury's temperature range such as ammonia.
It also tends to seep inside of porous solids, and to readily amalgamate with other metals and minerals.
It's extremely unlikely, but you might find a mercury lake on the poles of a highly volcanic planet in the habitable zone.
But mercury doesn't really exist in the abundance or state of matter needed to create oceans, never mind lakes.
@@jeremyhall9346 In case anyone is coming along to read this later, "Jeremy Hall"'s answer is complete and total pseudoscience nonsense bulshite and is not the reason for the relative abundances of elements we see in the crust today.
@@Muonium1 so you got a video? No? Ok, Ill believe that. Oh and jesus rose from the dead.
@@jeremyhall9346 why does it not surprise me that you're an inbred religidi0t
Based on analogy & steps which you take & follow in your clips...
... You are just a genius !!!
Love ALL your clips !! ❤️
Please more!!
MUCH more!!
I'd like to watch that spark zoomed in a filmed by a HD high scpeed camera. I'm sure it'd be trippy. And no, I'm not just saying that because it's April 20th.
Watch my lightning videos.
it moves at the speed of light so good luck capturing the FLOW of the spark.
@@vitalnutrients744 Ionized channels of air don't propagate at the speed of light.
As I`m stupid at physics i thought your chamber will explode from oxygen/propane mix. why it didnt ? not enough oxygen ?
ShutuP Drift The same reason your house doesn't explode when you turn a gas stove on.
yep it's more or less the same as just burning propane in air, the propane or oxygen is burning as fast as it's coming out so it's not going to be able to make a fuel oxygen mix that would lead to it exploding.
It did not explode for exactly same reason why a candle does not, or a propane burner of any sort. Process of burning is a reaction between two chemicals, mediums... Gasses in this particular experiment. Reaction happens at the rate gasses are mixed. Propane is not something destined to release energy the instant some oxygen touches it. Add a bit of oxygen when source of ignition is present - get a little flame. Add more - get bigger flame. Mix fuel and oxidizer in a proportion same as they react in and then add a source of ignition - get an explosion which is rather a deflagration. Not to be confused with detonation, where reaction is propagated by the shock wave and not heat.
You can find tables online that tell you the ratio fuels will burn, many gases need between roughly 20-35% gas to air to ignite, some are more some are less, if you have less or more than the ratio it will burn, you won't get any kind of ignition, gas stoves have the proper measurement to give you a good flame that can cook food
I guess finding the chart that has all the gases is harder than I thought, I found the ratio for propane which is 2.2% to 9.6% propane to air (assuming that's atmospheric air) so if you have a chamber similar to Cody's and you have 15% propane to 85% atmosphere, on paper it shouldn't burn
Reminds me of an oxy acetylene torch with an oxidizing flame.
TheVexCortex just what I was thinking, most fabricators and metal workers know you can actually shut off the acetylene at the bottle in the middle of a cut and continue it with just oxy.
+no no; burning the metal where the oxygen wind fans it to stay lit?
no no First time hearing that. Does the pressure of the oxygen and the remaining heat actually pull it off? I've only had few experiences with cutting in high school; I wouldn't have thought that could be possible. :x
When oxy-fuel cutting, you're oxidizing the iron so fast it vaporizes. It's not so much the pressure, as it is an incredibly oxygen rich atmosphere.
VGameL0v3e12sF012Ree yes, the oxygen has more than enough pressure to cut. In a regular cut with a torch all you are really doing is using the acetylene flame to heat the metal and then using the oxygen to blow the molten metal away. If you begin the cut on acetylene and get everything out enough, when you shut off the acetylene the metal becomes the fuel source instead with the oxygen feeding it and blowing it out of the way.
Most people don’t think it works, good way to make a couple bucks on a bet
Back at it, for the 3rd time now. Its been a few months but hell this is an amazing thing Cody. Thankyou
3:26 xray time
can anyone explain to me what's going on with the "spark" in the vacuum? is this glowing actually the copper being ionized?
I believe that due to the lack of gas to allow the electrons to ionize the gas, they just get emitted in all directions, causing whatever gas they fly through to glow, without creating a spark in the process. This way, the gas near the electrodes glows visibly, since most electrons move through that region.
The arc is electrons flowing between the electrodes. It's visible because an electron spontaneously degrades into a photon (light) and negative charge. I'm leaving something out, like where the charge ends up. The electron's mass goes to the Higgs field, as I recall. Think of it as just going "poof".
I believe this is a bit too specific quantum mechanics, and propably incorrect as well. When electrons emit light, they don't go "poof". The light is caused by electrons travelling through the medium and colliding with the atoms of the gas, raising the energy levels of the electrons orbitting the gas, if not knocking them loose entirely(ionisation). Those electrons that remain or re-enter the atom's orbitals release energy to occupy a less energetic level. This is called an atomic transition and the released energy takes the form of photons, which you see as light.
In a gas(even a fairly thin gas) the atoms are ionized by an electric field(voltage difference across the gap) so that the atoms become + or - ions, similar to the sodium and chloride ions in a saltwater solution.(distilled water does not conduct electricity, it is the salt ions that transfer + and - charges) This ionization is what allows conductivity for significant current flow and the bulk ionized gas is known as plasma. The light emitted from the plasma is caused by electrons falling back to lower energy states releasing that energy difference as a photon.
In a strong vacuum where ionized particles are in short supply electrons can be shot straight through space, this is an electron gun and is the principle behind cathode ray tubes.(most famous for classic "CRT" television and oscilloscope screens where the electrons are targeted by magnetic fields to hit various phosphor compounds)
The glow you see in the video is coronal discharge, Cody's vacuum is only a moderate [incomplete] vacuum and so there are still some gases present to become excited in the sharp electric field gradient but not enough field strength or plasma to fully bridge the gap and create a proper conductive arc path.
That little light it produce is very dangerous, its a lot of Ultraviolet waves and bit of X-rays.
I guess if you were on Titan, and you used a lighter to spark a flame. Regular lighters filled with propane won't work, so replace propane with oxygen. Then an oxygen filled lighter will work on Titan.
But your cigar still won't work.
It still won't work because Titan's atmosphere is nearly all nitrogen. However if you walked down to a shore of a lake of liquid methane/ethane, where concentration of gaseous methane/ethane is higher as the vapors are being wafted from the lake surface, it will work.
Most of Titan's surface is solid and there are only a few lakes in polar regions.
tye tygon great idea, but quite ironic right? Oxider becoming the standard fuel for another planet.
Robert Heal pack oxygen like a firecracker into the cigar
Not many people stay up late all night and then set up an experiment just because they were curious. I love this guy!
How about burning oxygen in the mix of propane and nitrogen?
That’s what he did when he used reg air
burning oxygen is impossible. oxygen is already 100% oxidized.
Florine says otherwise.
Surely it is the propane that is burning. The flame is confined to the region that is within the flammability limits, outside that is too rich and will not combust.
@@984francis 100% correct. Oxygen is not combustible. The propane is mixing with the oxygen at the nozzle and creating a reaction zone in which the propane ignites. outside of this reaction zone the mixture is too rich (propane) to ignite.
@@theCodyReeder
Well under conditions one would consider normal, oxygen cannot burn.
Oxygen would only burn if it is in the presence of a more powerful oxidizing agent.
O2+O2=O3+O (almost)
try to fill it with hydrogen and then try it .
try not to die again.
That is one of the most out of the box experiments I have seen here. Really nice video.
oh this is gonna be brilliant
Everything about this is cool!
Majorly cool idea!
A very low exposure photo of the flame would have been nice such that more of the inner structure of the flame is visible. Also maybe less pressure is needed when the spark is nearer to the outlet. Actually on Titan one would need to do that reverse fire under liquid hydrocarbon but I guess even with propane instead of low condensing methane that would be a diffecult, dangerous and expensive experiment. Furthermore Titans low gravity would influence the flame too, so next time hop on a parabloic flight with a liquid methane contaption. Just joking.
Liquid oxygen not liquid propane. And liquid is just used to cram more into a "fuel" tank. It is always the gas that burns.
AnataSesaDas
Titans atmosphere is mostly nitrogen with only tiny traces of reducing hydrocarbons. An oxygen source probably won't burn there (no reverse flame). Even with the very high density of Titans atmosphere. (Due to the low temperature Titans atmosphere is much denser than the slightly above earth pressure might suggest). So to see a reverse flame I guess you have much better chance by diving beneath the surface of one of Titans chemically strongly reducing methane lakes. (These lakes have solvated into them some ethane, propane and other higher molecular stuff that on Titan otherwise would be solid. Myterious chemistry.) Our reverse fuel "oxygen" is barely gaseous on Titan. Just as it is with nitrogen (Titans main atmosphere is on the brink of self collapse). But when you bring the oxygen with you contained in an only slightly pressurized tank it will be liquid for sure. Whether the release of this oxygen (in liquid state) out of a nozzle into the liquid methane sea leads to a falling or rising temperature, and whether the oxygen stays liquid or not - when not yet ignited, depends on the heat of evaporation, the inversion temperature, (and maybe mixing enthalpy). Interesting exercise to work that out. Calculating if the flame can sustain itself in Titans conditions is much harder. Maybe impossible, requiring an actual experiment.
If a self sustaining flame really can be ignited (the low temperature makes this harder & the ~thousand times higher density than on earth makes it probably easier.) Then a self sustaining slightly plasmized gas flame sheet must form that only rips up in separate bubbles above the flame. A sheet ripping too early would rip the ignition source. The ripped sheet above the flame would form bubbles that rapidly re-condense due to heat loss to the environment.
While thinking about it here I think this sheet could effectively form a too effective mixing barrier and quench the flame. Low gravity makes big bubbles this is good to prevent ripping apart of the sheet but bad since the mixing barrier becomes thicker. Interesting is also: the smaller the bubbles the faster they re-condense, due to the growing surface to volume ratio.
This should make for an interesting visual effect.
If I'd need to bet I's say such sub-titan-lake-liquid-oxygen-bubble-flames can't be ignited. But I may be wrong.
The next best thing is to blow out "hot" exhaust gas from a pretty conventional heat engine (that internally mixes the agents - strongly preferably in slightly pre-heated gaseous form - or else it might not end well). Then one will have at least these strange suddenly vanishing bubbles for sure. No flame though.
Smaller bubbles have higher dynamic friction this makes them seem disappear even more suddenly (beside the accelerated heat loss effect).
Collapsing bubbles may make a sound and give off sonoluminescence.
Imagine that audiovisual experience in titans night with millions of those bubbles.
Yes, Titan's atmosphere can be described basically as nitrogen. However, there should be enough gaseous methane/ethane at the lake shores so it should work there.
I don't watch all your vids but when something like this pops up in my feed I'm glad I subscribed a few years ago.