Thank you for demonstrating a concept I'd first demonstrated when I was 14 in 1972. I had no effective way to record my experiments at that time, so nobody ever believed me that glass conducts when heated. I used a 300VAC source from a power transformer pulled out of an ancient TV connected to a piece of plain glass (from a hobby store) by a metal clip. After a few swipes with the other electrode (a nail inside an insulating wooden dowel forming a rudimentary probe) to get a small arc to form, it began to heat up the glass. Of course, 300V will barely even arc a millimeter in dry air until there's an ionized region of air (i.e. plasma) in which to facilitate a greater arc. Once the glass had heated to red-hot, then I was able to form an arc directly between the probe and the glass, which caused the glass to heat to white-hot. As the temperature increased, it produced a highly conductive column of plasma allowing up to 3-inch long yellow "furry" arcs to be drawn between the probe tip and the glass! I ended up creating some rudimentary, yet functional, thermistors by encasing thin wires inside a globule of molten glass. Interestingly, even after these cooled down to room-temperature, the resistance would change notably when warmed - even by body temperature. I had lots of fun playing with arcs onto molten glass in my parent's basement at that time, and learned a lot along the way.
Maybe your thermistor worked at low temperatures because some metal ions had doped the glass. It would be good to get the opinion of a semiconductor structure specialist on this.
@@Poult100 Thank you for your input. Yes, I'm quite certain that there was some doping of the glass going on there as the metal from the probe electrode vaporized. I mean, I was 14, and I wasn't exactly working in a sterile lab. :)
I agree. I watched the entire video, which I don’t usually do with his content. It’s not that the content is bad; it just doesn’t always hold my attention.
To be honest, he's probably at the point where "criticism" from his many viewers isn't useful, as there's too many different opinions. Also he does quite a diverse range of things, so it'll always be a bit hit and miss. I think it's a bit underrated actually, as lots of channels don't actually do the experiments, they just write on a screen and animate from Wikipedia articles.
I was a bit of a mad scientist as a kid in the 70’s mucking about in my parent’s basement. I happened to come into possession of a high voltage transformer used for neon signs. I attached a couple of wires to the terminals and wrapped the other ends around a thin glass rod that came with my chemistry set. They were separated by about a half inch of glass rod. I plugged it in and was fascinated to watch as the electricity arcing between the wires heated the glass until it began to conduct and glowed extremely brightly. I never understood what was happening until now 50 years later. Thanks for making this video. The microwave part was equally fascinating. BTW, I also had some fun making Jacob’s Ladders with the transformer 😄
There's a video over at JerryRigEverything where he goes through a glass recycling pipeline. The glass cullet is sent to a factory where it's melted by just this process (with immersed electrodes) and then used to make fiberglass insulation.
Not just glass! Any ionic solid is conductive once molten. For example, production of highly electropositive metals such as sodium, potassium, magnesium or aluminium relies on electrolysis of the respective molten salt. These metals cannot be smelted the same way most metals (e.g. iron) because even the reduction potential of carbon is too low. The salt must be free of water because these metals react violently with water, especially under the reaction conditions (the product is metal hydroxide and hydrogen gas).
Wow, thats a stunning experiment. You have invented the Anti-Fuse, It conducts when it gets hot ! Amazing, Great videos as always but this one is a real learner.
And if you If you are able to 'tune' the temperature to be lower, it could even be used as part of a heat warning system. Idk what the actual application may be, (possibly an industrial furnace)
That flame from your torch will carry electricity as well. I am very surprised your torch did not shock you. The blue paint on your torch is probably the only thing that stopped you from getting shocked. In the heating and air business we pass a current through the flame in a gas furnace as a safety feature to turn off the gas if the flame goes out, this is called Flame Rectification. Flame rectification is a process that uses a flame's electrical properties to detect the presence of a flame. Please be safe and don't do that again, if you do wear gloves. This would actually be another good subject for a video. As you have seen with volcanoes creating lightning, electricity is passing through hot magnum so even rock can conduct electricity under the right conditions.
Fascinating video... Could the wires inside the glass pull together in the molten glass by electrical attraction? Could the metal in the wires dope the glass to be more conductive?
I watched a chemistry magic show when I was in college. Take one of your light bulbs. Connect it to a DC current source till it glows brightly. Then immerse the glass portion in a salt solution, then connect one of the wires to the salt solution. The free electrons inside the hot bulb will cause the sodium in the glass to plate the inside of the light bulb with a layer of sodium metal. The sodium is literally moving through the glass due to the electric field and changing to metal on the inside of the bulb !
@@markofdistinction6094 Interesting ! I need to do it could be a new discovery. If I make it , I will cut a piece of that treated glass And apply a voltage on one side to see what come out on the opposite side. Could be great if DC can be blocked like a diode. Also to see if extra pure metallic sodium or something else could be produced ! With that filtration method.
@ The professor told us that if Potassium Chloride is used instead of Sodium Chloride in the salt solution, the glass will explode. This is because the potassium ion is bigger than the sodium, so stresses the glass as it tries to move through the glass matrix.
The difference is amazing of how boring your videos look like they are going to be before you watch them and how totally cool and interesting they were after you do.
I made the same experiment abaout 30 years ago, use 60 watt bulbs and you have a stable situation, blowing on the hot glas wil dim the light and it wil get brighter on its own again. for most people this was an eye opener. nice project the microwave i did not now , dont have a microwave in the time even. LOL
Something that you might find interesting, is that the molten glass should have "negative" resistance. And in the case of the lightbulb example, would be somewhat temperature regulating. This is because as the glass cools off, its resistance would increase, causing more of the available electrical energy to go into heating the glass, vs lightning the other lightbulb. As it heats up, the resistance would decrease, thus transferring more energy to the lightbulb, allowing the glass to cool. A happy medium somewhere in the middle would be achieved, keeping both the lightbulb filament and glass hot. Especially where the incandescent lightbulb has "positive" resistance
@Paint0nBrush essentially, yes. The hotter it gets, the lower the resistance. Gas tubes tend to behave the same way, but are not necessarily dependent on temperature, even though it does affect them. Increasing current in these circumstances, decreases the voltage across them, hence "negative" resistance. The vast majority of conductors increase resistance as they get hotter.
This is really cool. It looks like the broken bulb setup even has possible applications... Like some sort of thermally triggered, self-latching liquid relay? I wonder how many times you can cycle that before the glass degrades too much to do it. The way it restarts itself when you apply power, but only if it's above a certain temperature... Definitely seems useful for at least something.
Or possibly some form of warning system. Especially if the glass can be tuned to react like this to different temperatures. And i don't think the glass would degrade, as far as we can tell, it's infinitely recyclable. Granted, sustained heat may cause the glass itself, or the ions responsible for this process to evaporate and leave the glass
Ok…that was fascinating, and I never would have imagined that result…..in fact, i’d never even thought about it, or considered it a possibility…because….its GLASS….glass is glass. Its literally THE BAR for electrical insulation….im just stunned. 🤣🤣🤣. Well done, Sir 👍
Merci pour cette vidéo alors là je suis hyper étonné je savais pas qu'on pouvait rendre du verre conducteur en le faisant fondre et modifier les structures atomiques environ les atomes d'oxygène😅😅😅😅 vous aimez prendre des risques mais ça montre que les propriétés des matériels😊
Next time, scotch tape the bulb, after showing they're in series crack the taped bulb near the base with vice-grips to remove the envelope without damaging the filament. Turn the power back on. Most people have never seen burning tungsten. After you have molten glass, use a glove and pliers to hold one of the electrode wires you snipped off, poke it into the melted glass and pull out a thin strand till you get bored. Thanks for the electrolysis info!
I would love to see what happen when quartz glass (pure SiO2) is tested. You would need more temp flame or use some refractory cavity. And pyrex glass too!
0:28 "The resistivity of glass is typically really high, often in the range of tens of billions to even hundreds of trillions of ohmmeters." The unit of electrical resistance is the ohm. An ohmmeter is a device that measures resistance, providing a readout in ohms.
Glass is an insulator for electricity but it is also a semiconductor with a very wide band gap. All insulators will become conductive as the temperature is increased due to higher electron energies allowing some to cross the band gap from the valence to the conduction bands.
Wow. I never thought that glass could become conductive. Wow, glass electrolysis. Pretty impressive in the microwave too! You can bet I will never try this at home!
I vaguely remember my dad telling me about an (inefficient) light source using a glass rod as a filament. The power stays on and jou start the lamp by heating the rod with an external flame. To switch off you could blow on the rod to cool it down until the bi-stable process stops. I can't find any info online about those lamps.
Thanks to a magic store, I can do one of the experiments you talked about. It's the experiment of invisibility, and the principle of invisibility is cool even though it only takes a second to make the object visible and invisible. The illusion is 4D Surprise.
What I want to know is why the beer bottle didn't break from having a spot of it heated red hot? Glass normally breaks from being unevenly heated well before even starting to glow.
2:28 - my heart stopped when I saw you about to touch those exposed wires
Lol, you can see my fingers hesitate and then reposition where I am touching
@@TheActionLabIf I remember correctly, the torch flame is also conductive, so you should be careful.
I was not till that point of the video when I read the comment, after reaching there I could only scream "Yikes!".
@@GianlucaMina If he had been conductive to ground?
@@GianlucaMina But not conductive enough for 120V or even for 220V to pass.
Thank you for demonstrating a concept I'd first demonstrated when I was 14 in 1972. I had no effective way to record my experiments at that time, so nobody ever believed me that glass conducts when heated.
I used a 300VAC source from a power transformer pulled out of an ancient TV connected to a piece of plain glass (from a hobby store) by a metal clip. After a few swipes with the other electrode (a nail inside an insulating wooden dowel forming a rudimentary probe) to get a small arc to form, it began to heat up the glass. Of course, 300V will barely even arc a millimeter in dry air until there's an ionized region of air (i.e. plasma) in which to facilitate a greater arc.
Once the glass had heated to red-hot, then I was able to form an arc directly between the probe and the glass, which caused the glass to heat to white-hot. As the temperature increased, it produced a highly conductive column of plasma allowing up to 3-inch long yellow "furry" arcs to be drawn between the probe tip and the glass!
I ended up creating some rudimentary, yet functional, thermistors by encasing thin wires inside a globule of molten glass. Interestingly, even after these cooled down to room-temperature, the resistance would change notably when warmed - even by body temperature.
I had lots of fun playing with arcs onto molten glass in my parent's basement at that time, and learned a lot along the way.
Never tried glass, but in college chemistry, we did find molten salt conducts very well. That was over 40 years ago.
Maybe your thermistor worked at low temperatures because some metal ions had doped the glass. It would be good to get the opinion of a semiconductor structure specialist on this.
Once, 50 years ago I tried this with a welder and it worked exactly the same, the hot molten glass acts as a regular conductor.
@@Poult100 Thank you for your input. Yes, I'm quite certain that there was some doping of the glass going on there as the metal from the probe electrode vaporized. I mean, I was 14, and I wasn't exactly working in a sterile lab. :)
I don't know if this is constructive criticism or criticism at all but that is one of your better videos for some time
100% agree
I agree. Something I never really thought about and got excited to see what happened.
I agree. I watched the entire video, which I don’t usually do with his content. It’s not that the content is bad; it just doesn’t always hold my attention.
Some videos are just a little extra interesting
To be honest, he's probably at the point where "criticism" from his many viewers isn't useful, as there's too many different opinions.
Also he does quite a diverse range of things, so it'll always be a bit hit and miss.
I think it's a bit underrated actually, as lots of channels don't actually do the experiments, they just write on a screen and animate from Wikipedia articles.
I was a bit of a mad scientist as a kid in the 70’s mucking about in my parent’s basement. I happened to come into possession of a high voltage transformer used for neon signs. I attached a couple of wires to the terminals and wrapped the other ends around a thin glass rod that came with my chemistry set. They were separated by about a half inch of glass rod. I plugged it in and was fascinated to watch as the electricity arcing between the wires heated the glass until it began to conduct and glowed extremely brightly. I never understood what was happening until now 50 years later. Thanks for making this video. The microwave part was equally fascinating. BTW, I also had some fun making Jacob’s Ladders with the transformer 😄
These are two of the coolest experiments and results you've done.
Great demonstration and exposes a major safety vulnerability when using glass as a conductive insulator.
I always enjoy episodes of The Action Lab.
It's incredible how many interesting physical phenomenons can he still find after all those years!
One of your best videos. Cograts. And thanks for the multilanguaje audio tracks
Now I need to see styropyro do this with his crazy 20,000 watt microwave
There's a video over at JerryRigEverything where he goes through a glass recycling pipeline. The glass cullet is sent to a factory where it's melted by just this process (with immersed electrodes) and then used to make fiberglass insulation.
One of my favorite channels for sure.
Very cool demonstration. I had no idea that glass did this at high temperatures. Thanks for showing this video.
Not just glass! Any ionic solid is conductive once molten. For example, production of highly electropositive metals such as sodium, potassium, magnesium or aluminium relies on electrolysis of the respective molten salt. These metals cannot be smelted the same way most metals (e.g. iron) because even the reduction potential of carbon is too low. The salt must be free of water because these metals react violently with water, especially under the reaction conditions (the product is metal hydroxide and hydrogen gas).
3:20 every high voltage worker gaining new fears of voltage runaway
What an excellent demonstration ! Thank you !
Wow, thats a stunning experiment. You have invented the Anti-Fuse, It conducts when it gets hot ! Amazing, Great videos as always but this one is a real learner.
And if you If you are able to 'tune' the temperature to be lower, it could even be used as part of a heat warning system.
Idk what the actual application may be, (possibly an industrial furnace)
I think that's just called a thermal semi-conductor?
This is: impressive, scary, interesting, insightful. Thank you!
The hole opening in bottle die to microwave was awesome. Never thought this was possible.
Same !
You might've discovered a new way of keeping the glass warm while molding.
Yeah an extrem dangerous one
@@FirstnameLastname-db5pp It would only be dangerous if set up poorly. Heating things with electricity is done all the time.
@@FirstnameLastname-db5pp Oh, yes, just like electric arc furnaces and welders.
I did learn something new today. Thanks !
I wonder if because it's conductive you could use Eddy currents from a coil to keep it warm
I always learn something new from your videos.
Today, I learned something NEW! This is a concept I have never conceived.
This was quite a profound revelation period. THANK YOU.
That flame from your torch will carry electricity as well. I am very surprised your torch did not shock you. The blue paint on your torch is probably the only thing that stopped you from getting shocked. In the heating and air business we pass a current through the flame in a gas furnace as a safety feature to turn off the gas if the flame goes out, this is called Flame Rectification. Flame rectification is a process that uses a flame's electrical properties to detect the presence of a flame. Please be safe and don't do that again, if you do wear gloves. This would actually be another good subject for a video. As you have seen with volcanoes creating lightning, electricity is passing through hot magnum so even rock can conduct electricity under the right conditions.
You learn something new everyday 🎉🎉🎉❤❤
Fascinating video... Could the wires inside the glass pull together in the molten glass by electrical attraction? Could the metal in the wires dope the glass to be more conductive?
definitely one of the neatest demos I've seen you do,
I’m always so happy to see a new video by you. This one was awesome!
Use molten glass to produce light is interesting 😊 sounds much more reliable than using tungsten wire
That was amazing! Thank you so much for making videos on subjects i didnt even know were possible, stay awesome!!!😁👍
I learned something today, thanks !!
Thanks for all of your great content. I always learn something.
I am amazed how yt recommends videos as soon as they are uploaded.
Btw a great video as always !!
If you subscribe to the channel you will be notified immediately 🤷♂️
I watched a chemistry magic show when I was in college. Take one of your light bulbs. Connect it to a DC current source till it glows brightly. Then immerse the glass portion in a salt solution, then connect one of the wires to the salt solution. The free electrons inside the hot bulb will cause the sodium in the glass to plate the inside of the light bulb with a layer of sodium metal. The sodium is literally moving through the glass due to the electric field and changing to metal on the inside of the bulb !
@@markofdistinction6094
Interesting ! I need to do it could be a new discovery. If I make it , I will cut a piece of that treated glass
And apply a voltage on one side to see what come out on the opposite side. Could be great if DC can be blocked like a diode. Also to see if extra pure metallic sodium or something else could be produced ! With that filtration method.
Cool story broah.
@ The professor told us that if Potassium Chloride is used instead of Sodium Chloride in the salt solution, the glass will explode. This is because the potassium ion is bigger than the sodium, so stresses the glass as it tries to move through the glass matrix.
Great demonstration.👍
The difference is amazing of how boring your videos look like they are going to be before you watch them and how totally cool and interesting they were after you do.
You made my day with that demonstration,
This was one of the coolest videos I've seen in a while.
Interesting and thanks. It was a very clever experiment that was well presented.
Very cool experiment!
Amazing demo.
Very interesting. Learned something new today!
Very nice demonstration !
Superb - as always fantastic and thought provoking combination of demos and analysis.
one of the only channels where I always know that the video will be interesting before I click
Brilliant experimentation! Stay safe there, we need you! ;)
Wow, such a great demonstration! Thank you!
Your reaction is always fun. The joy of discovery
Thank you for teaching me my one new thing I learned today
I made the same experiment abaout 30 years ago, use 60 watt bulbs and you have a stable situation, blowing on the hot glas wil dim the light and it wil get brighter on its own again. for most people this was an eye opener. nice project the microwave i did not now , dont have a microwave in the time even. LOL
Something that you might find interesting, is that the molten glass should have "negative" resistance.
And in the case of the lightbulb example, would be somewhat temperature regulating.
This is because as the glass cools off, its resistance would increase, causing more of the available electrical energy to go into heating the glass, vs lightning the other lightbulb. As it heats up, the resistance would decrease, thus transferring more energy to the lightbulb, allowing the glass to cool.
A happy medium somewhere in the middle would be achieved, keeping both the lightbulb filament and glass hot. Especially where the incandescent lightbulb has "positive" resistance
is this negative temperature coefficient (NTC)?
@Paint0nBrush essentially, yes.
The hotter it gets, the lower the resistance.
Gas tubes tend to behave the same way, but are not necessarily dependent on temperature, even though it does affect them.
Increasing current in these circumstances, decreases the voltage across them, hence "negative" resistance.
The vast majority of conductors increase resistance as they get hotter.
This is really cool. It looks like the broken bulb setup even has possible applications... Like some sort of thermally triggered, self-latching liquid relay?
I wonder how many times you can cycle that before the glass degrades too much to do it.
The way it restarts itself when you apply power, but only if it's above a certain temperature... Definitely seems useful for at least something.
Or possibly some form of warning system. Especially if the glass can be tuned to react like this to different temperatures.
And i don't think the glass would degrade, as far as we can tell, it's infinitely recyclable. Granted, sustained heat may cause the glass itself, or the ions responsible for this process to evaporate and leave the glass
Wonderfully explained.
Ok…that was fascinating, and I never would have imagined that result…..in fact, i’d never even thought about it, or considered it a possibility…because….its GLASS….glass is glass.
Its literally THE BAR for electrical insulation….im just stunned. 🤣🤣🤣. Well done, Sir 👍
That's a great experiment. Keep up the great experiments.
In glass fibre insulation production, the raw glass is heated by electric arc to a liquid state.😊
Merci pour cette vidéo alors là je suis hyper étonné je savais pas qu'on pouvait rendre du verre conducteur en le faisant fondre et modifier les structures atomiques environ les atomes d'oxygène😅😅😅😅 vous aimez prendre des risques mais ça montre que les propriétés des matériels😊
I had not heard of this, thank you.
7:18 that indeed is "Cool".
Wow it’s crazy 😂 good job my friend excellently 👍👏👏☝️ thanks 🙏
This was nice, it reminded me why I started to watch this channel. The last videos didn't have the same vibe.
Good episode. I learned something.
2:28, ooooh! I was waiting for the *zap* and the "ouch!"
This guy tells me stuff I didn’t even know I wanted to know.
Really Amazing! Very interesting video, thanks a lot!
I forgot what I wanted to say
Best comment ever
Opened comments, saw this, forgot what I was here about...
Well played.
@styropyro needs to try this in his 10,000 watt custom microwave 😂
TOTALLY
@OuyaWoelders-hi9bn That microwave is insane.... just like styropyro LOL
Next time, scotch tape the bulb, after showing they're in series crack the taped bulb near the base with vice-grips to remove the envelope without damaging the filament. Turn the power back on. Most people have never seen burning tungsten. After you have molten glass, use a glove and pliers to hold one of the electrode wires you snipped off, poke it into the melted glass and pull out a thin strand till you get bored. Thanks for the electrolysis info!
Great video, thanks. New thing added to my TIL list.
Very cool demo!
Very interesting, i wonder if it could be used for something
I love it when you said "oh yeah, and this is high on the list of dumb things to do in a microwave"
very interesting! 😮
"Dumb things to do in a microwave". That's why I also watch Styropyro !
I would love to see what happen when quartz glass (pure SiO2) is tested. You would need more temp flame or use some refractory cavity. And pyrex glass too!
Need to see that last experiment with Styropyros Macrowave
0:28 "The resistivity of glass is typically really high, often in the range of tens of billions to even hundreds of trillions of ohmmeters."
The unit of electrical resistance is the ohm. An ohmmeter is a device that measures resistance, providing a readout in ohms.
This was super! Thanx a lot!
Glass is an insulator for electricity but it is also a semiconductor with a very wide band gap. All insulators will become conductive as the temperature is increased due to higher electron energies allowing some to cross the band gap from the valence to the conduction bands.
Very interesting ! Especially the microwave part. Does silicon oil get conductive in the microwave ?
You needed to measure the resistance of the glass as it slowly cooled down.
Can you use this to make silicon metal?
Super demo!
What if you were to repeat using fused quartz?
Wow. I never thought that glass could become conductive. Wow, glass electrolysis. Pretty impressive in the microwave too! You can bet I will never try this at home!
I vaguely remember my dad telling me about an (inefficient) light source using a glass rod as a filament. The power stays on and jou start the lamp by heating the rod with an external flame. To switch off you could blow on the rod to cool it down until the bi-stable process stops.
I can't find any info online about those lamps.
Thanks to a magic store, I can do one of the experiments you talked about. It's the experiment of invisibility, and the principle of invisibility is cool even though it only takes a second to make the object visible and invisible. The illusion is 4D Surprise.
Great video 💯
how do you come up with all these cool ideas. great video.
Cool video mate, take care
That's amazing. How did got discover this? Do you just play with random things untill you find something like this?
When you melted that light bulb, you kind of made a semiconductor that failed open. It was a thermal switch that would never turn off.
I get an creative idea with that. As always and a cool video of course too.
Fascinating! Do you think that drop would shatter like a Prince Rupert's drop?
I can imagine potential applications for a non-conductive silicate that’s been doped with other elements to adjust its conductive properties.
What I want to know is why the beer bottle didn't break from having a spot of it heated red hot? Glass normally breaks from being unevenly heated well before even starting to glow.
LOVED THIS VIDEO
Very interesting!
This demonstrates that conductivity varies significantly over a wide range
Cool. The micro vedder bottle, the glass lobe looked like a Rupert drip. I wonder does it have the same properties
Was the rest of the bottle relatively hot too ?
Thanks for such an amazing content ❤️
I liked this video more than your previous videos in recent times 🔥
Excellent😮😊😊😊😊😊