World's Largest Elephant Toothpaste Experiment — Transcript

Full transcript

1. 0:00- This is the brand new Guinness World Record,
2. 0:02largest ever elephant toothpaste foam experiment.
3. 0:04In today's video, which is partially sponsored by LastPass,
4. 0:07I'm gonna walk you through everything
5. 0:08we have to go through to get to this point,
6. 0:10as well as some really cool side discoveries
7. 0:12we made in our hundreds of hours of testing along the way.
8. 0:15The main ingredient for elephant's toothpaste
9. 0:17is hydrogen peroxide.
10. 0:19It's the same stuff you pour on a scrape to disinfect it.
11. 0:21The thing is, the bonds that hold the hydrogen
12. 0:23and oxygen together are pretty weak.
13. 0:25So if we poured some of this in here,
14. 0:27and just left it for a while,
15. 0:29it would keep releasing oxygen and eventually,
16. 0:32you'd be left with just water.
17. 0:33However, if you add a catalyst like potassium iodide,
18. 0:36you could make that slow process happen almost instantly.
19. 0:39(concoction hisses)
20. 0:41So that's cool, but we can make it way more impressive
21. 0:43if we add one key ingredient, soap.
22. 0:46So if we pour this in and then do everything else the same,
23. 0:49now when the oxygen is released,
24. 0:51the soap captures it, creating bubbles and foam.
25. 0:54And then finally, if you do all that again,
26. 0:56only now you add food coloring and use a flask
27. 0:58that tapers like this,
28. 0:59you can focus the expansion of foam
29. 1:01so it looks maximum awesome.
30. 1:03(bright music)
31. 1:08So in order to fill a pool with this stuff,
32. 1:11I first got together with some friends,
33. 1:12and we spent literally hundreds of hours for a few weeks
34. 1:15running experiments to calculate
35. 1:17the best raw ingredient combinations
36. 1:19in addition to brainstorming other cool things
37. 1:21we might do with it.
38. 1:21And so before we attempted to shatter
39. 1:23the current world record,
40. 1:24we had an end-of-summer party with my son
41. 1:26and a bunch of family friends
42. 1:28where we wanted to share with them
43. 1:29the coolest side discoveries from our research.
44. 1:31But first, in true end-of-summer fashion,
45. 1:33we had to knock out some slip and slide kickball.
46. 1:35(upbeat music)
47. 1:45(upbeat music)
48. 1:49I planned to kick things off by attacking them
49. 1:51with an elephant toothpaste gun we made
50. 1:52as revenge for when a bunch of these same kids ambushed me
51. 1:55on a recent beach trip,
52. 1:56and then offered me some cookies
53. 1:58which were just six massive cockroaches.
54. 2:00And I hate cockroaches.
55. 2:02Shamoo! Get it off me!
56. 2:03However, as part of our testing,
57. 2:04we discover the reaction is highly exothermic,
58. 2:06which means it generates heat as a byproduct.
59. 2:09If you watch it infrared,
60. 2:09you'll see the temperature of the foam right
61. 2:11after the reaction can reach almost 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
62. 2:14So, because I'm nice, I shelved my revenge plans
63. 2:17and just demonstrated what would've been their fate,
64. 2:19and told them to sit and watch at a safe distance.
65. 2:22And they listened, sort of.
66. 2:25And so now that we have their attention, it was showtime.
67. 2:28- [Everyone] Three, two, one!
68. 2:31- Go!
69. 2:32(bright music)
70. 2:41(bright music)
71. 2:44This one is called the melted unicorn.
72. 2:47(bright music)
73. 2:57(bright music)
74. 3:06(bright music)
75. 3:08You might recognize Bob Pflugfelder here, AKA, Science Bob.
76. 3:12He's been on "Jimmy Kimmel Live" 11 more times than I have,
77. 3:15and I invited him out to join me for a very specific reason,
78. 3:18which I will address in a bit.
79. 3:19(bright music)
80. 3:29(bright music)
81. 3:39And so with the success of the science show behind us,
82. 3:42it was now time for phase two.
83. 3:45So we are here, standing in an empty swimming pool,
84. 3:49about to try and break the world record
85. 3:51for elephant's toothpaste.
86. 3:52You wanna tell the good people
87. 3:53who owns the current world record, Bob?
88. 3:55- I do.
89. 3:55- You wanna tell the good people
90. 3:56who's about to not own the world record, Bob?
91. 3:58- Pretty confident, aren't you?
92. 3:59- (laughs) No, I'm not. - Mr. Engineer.
93. 4:01- But if everything goes well,
94. 4:03we're hoping to quadruple the amount
95. 4:05of the current record which you hold.
96. 4:06I'm not sure how much of like the trees
97. 4:08and neighborhood we're gonna cover in the process.
98. 4:10(bell dings)
99. 4:10Only time will tell,
100. 4:12and chemistry, which I don't understand,
101. 4:14but we'll see what we can come up with.
102. 4:17(bright music)
103. 4:24(bright music)
104. 4:27We wanted the foam to be safe to play in afterwards,
105. 4:29so we used ordinary baking yeast as our catalyst.
106. 4:32We could have bought yeast in big buckets,
107. 4:34but it turned out it was cheaper to get them
108. 4:36in one pound bags.
109. 4:37The only downside to that
110. 4:38is then you have to cut open 181 pound bags of yeast,
111. 4:43but that's why we have Science Bob.
112. 4:45- "Come on out," they said.
113. 4:46"It'll be fun," they said.
114. 4:48(bright music)
115. 4:55- This is an emergency tarp system.
116. 4:58So if we did our math right, it shouldn't overflow.
117. 5:01In the case that it does, we have these tarps here
118. 5:04to contain all of the foam
119. 5:05from not going everywhere in the yard.
120. 5:07We hope for the best,
121. 5:09plan for the worst.
122. 5:11(bright music)
123. 5:15We built these three frames for the tarps
124. 5:17that would contain the catalyst yeast solution.
125. 5:19So when it was time to fill the pool,
126. 5:20we could just cut the tarps and it would pour out.
127. 5:23The same way we cut the tarp
128. 5:24when we added the bigger Orbeez.
129. 5:26- I'm alive!
130. 5:27- And Kevin.
131. 5:29(motor whirring)
132. 5:30It's go time, baby.
133. 5:31We're probably like seven minutes out.
134. 5:35Got a bunch of kids inside are just rearing to get out.
135. 5:38The challenge here is this water's warm.
136. 5:40We didn't build these containers big enough,
137. 5:44so this will start rising.
138. 5:45So it's sort of a race against the clock
139. 5:47before it starts overflowing.
140. 5:49We still have to add the soap,
141. 5:50and then we have to add the food coloring.
142. 5:53(bright music)
143. 5:56(bright music)
144. 6:00Oh, this looks terrifying as I stab this bloody thing.
145. 6:04I think I'm about to get demonetized.
146. 6:07(bright music)
147. 6:12(bright music)
148. 6:13Okay, now we're adding the soap.
149. 6:16- This is what will actually make the bubbles.
150. 6:19Soap isn't part of the reaction.
151. 6:23(motors whirring)
152. 6:23Two more soap buckets.
153. 6:25Oh, as you can see, that bucket's filling up real quick.
154. 6:31(bright music)
155. 6:32So after a few final touches, we were ready to go.
156. 6:37Three, two, one!
157. 6:41Now before we cut the tarps,
158. 6:42I wanna point out I'm not a chemist.
159. 6:44With the physics and engineering problem,
160. 6:46I'm way more comfortable understanding the parameters
161. 6:48and getting closer to the final solution off the bat,
162. 6:50but chemistry is just little molecules I can't see.
163. 6:53And it feels a lot like trial and error
164. 6:55without any guarantee it will actually scale up predictably.
165. 6:58This was feeling like the nightmare of the jello pool
166. 7:01all over again.
167. 7:02To get to this point, we had ran over 150 tests,
168. 7:05sometimes, at great peril to that which we hold dear.
169. 7:08And so once again, if this was a total failure,
170. 7:11it wouldn't be from lack of effort.
171. 7:13Having said all that, here she is.
172. 7:15Two, one, go.
173. 7:19(liquid whooshing)
174. 7:32(liquid whooshing)
175. 7:46(children laughing)
176. 7:55So the good news is we broke the record.
177. 7:57The bad news is we're kind of overachievers.
178. 8:01Uh oh.
179. 8:02It's coming up.
180. 8:04The great tsunami!
181. 8:06Hey, hold this.
182. 8:08- [Child] Nope, goodbye camera.
183. 8:09- [Mark] Okay, stand back off the tarp.
184. 8:11- [Child] Goodbye camera!
185. 8:13- We need to grab 'em, stand back.
186. 8:15Hold this up, Bob.
187. 8:16Okay.
188. 8:17♪ Whew ♪
189. 8:18(upbeat music)
190. 8:26(upbeat music)
191. 8:27So while we pushed all the foam back into the pool,
192. 8:30that gave it some time to cool down
193. 8:32so we could actually touch it.
194. 8:37(upbeat music)
195. 8:41♪ Whew ♪
196. 8:42(upbeat music)
197. 8:47The drone was super cool
198. 8:48because not only did it make the foam
199. 8:49look like an alien cocoon,
200. 8:51but you could see it travel in infrared
201. 8:53because it would expose the much hotter, lower layers
202. 8:55of foam as it flew around.
203. 8:58What do you guys think?
204. 8:59Do you think this is gonna float?
205. 9:00- [Children] No!
206. 9:02- No? All right, here we go.
207. 9:03(upbeat music)
208. 9:12(upbeat music)
209. 9:16(upbeat music)
210. 9:19After all our tests,
211. 9:20we perfected the chemistry for this stuff.
212. 9:22So if you wanna make a home version you can play with,
213. 9:25check out Science Bob's website.
214. 9:27I'll leave a link in the video description.
215. 9:29- Oh my gosh! That's so fun!
216. 9:31(upbeat music)
217. 9:39(upbeat music)
218. 9:43(upbeat music)
219. 9:44♪ Whew ♪
220. 9:45- All right, Bob.
221. 9:46Sorry you're looking at an obsolete piece of material there.
222. 9:48- I had it for over a year.
223. 9:49- You did have it for over a year,
224. 9:51but all good things must come to an end.
225. 9:55- Say I was mad, but darn, that was a lot of fun.
226. 9:57- That was a lot of fun.
227. 9:58And I have good news because you
228. 10:00are still the world record holder.
229. 10:01I'm putting you on there with me, buddy.
230. 10:03Oh yeah, nerd hug.
231. 10:12(bright music)
232. 10:16(people yelling)
233. 10:21(snowballs striking)