This is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time, not the actual footage etc, but the fact that a science Youtuber (albeit a well respected research scientist) can change our understanding of a field. And it all started with playing around with sodium for a youtube video.
Well done Thunderf00t
I'm one of those contributors too.
Oh, and it's on-topic, to the tune of 5 billion amps!
that is pretty dam cool. i have handled metallic sodium myself, its interesting stuff
Dave, IMHO you didn't waste your money on this!
I wonder if this sort of sodium explosion could be used in high-discharge applications. Currently in fusion power prototypes they use banks of capacitors to discharge into lasers to produce peak gigawatts of power. Don't know how you'd harness the discharge current though.
Wow, amazing stuff!
It's guys like this, and you Dave, that add so much value to the internet.
O0
Who knows where this will lead to, including the transparent metal vid.
I worked in a foundry as a youngster, and over a weekend the roof developed a very small leak.
The rain fell into the sand mould for a huge stator plate, on Monday it was cast.
Soon could be a thing of the past thanks to this work.
They mentioned crowdfunding - any details?
That's some fantastic stuff. Interesting and well explained.
I wonder if you wound a coil round the reaction you could measure a magnetic field resulting from the electron flow
I wonder if this sort of sodium explosion could be used in high-discharge applications. Currently in fusion power prototypes they use banks of capacitors to discharge into lasers to produce peak gigawatts of power. Don't know how you'd harness the discharge current though.
....that could get the Flux Capacitor.....fluxing.
They mentioned crowdfunding - any details?
He's talking about Patreon, not Kickstarter et.al
So not a funded project, just generic per-video funding from his Patrons.
I wonder if you wound a coil round the reaction you could measure a magnetic field resulting from the electron flow
I thought the same thing, worth trying.
Oh, and it's on-topic, to the tune of 5 billion amps!
What's the voltage? Can you put some NAK on an electrode with the other electrode in the water and try to get some of that current through something else?
Thanks for the post, Dave. Very engrossing.
Hmm, a small toroidal coil, with some Na in the centre wired to test gear and dropped into some water? What sort of field would 5x109A on a micro scale generate?
So if I understood the video right, the current (electric, not electron!) flows inwards from the water to the metal. But considering that it does so on all sides of the metal droplet simultaneously, wouldn't the fields just cancel each other out (or at least most of it)?
It would be interesting to see an experiment with a coil, though, but I wouldn't expect it to produce anything usable. What if only one half of a chunk of metal was submerged?
Super cool on all counts.
I wonder if you wound a coil round the reaction you could measure a magnetic field resulting from the electron flow
I thought the same thing, worth trying.
Another good use for those EM probes of yours
Thunderf00t? Seriously? 90% of this guy's videos are anti-feminist drivel, mostly surrounding Anita Sarkessian. I hate what the woman has/is doing to the video game industry as much as the next person, but I think he takes his videos a little too far.
Thunderf00t? Seriously? 90% of this guy's videos are anti-feminist drivel, mostly surrounding Anita Sarkessian. I hate what the woman has/is doing to the video game industry as much as the next person, but I think he takes his videos a little too far.
Yes, his channel looks positively loony.
Enjoyed this very much, thanks, Dave!
The current is obviously traveling only a very short distance, and it's not very coherently directed, so the vector sum of all the currents is going to be small. It would be hard to measure, and much harder to harness.
But I'm curious. Does any of it radiate? I wonder if it at least makes a "pop" on a radio receiver nearby? My first guess would be that five billion amps, even very disorganized, would be audible on a radio at a reasonable distance, but...
That is awesome! Thanks for the link Dave.
Makes me want to order up some sodium and blow stuff up.
May be an incredibly high current, but the antenna is so small that it likely only emits in microwave region, absorbed by the water. Field likely will be zero outside the metal, and likely the only way to examine it will be to have a probe embedded partially in the liquid alloy and then freeze it to keep it in place. Place a sacrificial amplifier right by the metal to provide a low impedance cable drive and do a nuclear industry test regime of blowing up your probes with the experiment. You record the tiny amount of data before the destruction to get the info that you want.
Thunderf00t? Seriously?
Yes, seriously. You cannot deny that his science and debunking videos are absolutely first class.
90% of this guy's videos are anti-feminist drivel, mostly surrounding Anita Sarkessian.
So don't watch then.
And it's not even close to 90% as you claim. He has almost 500 videos, a very large percentage of which are science and bunking etc.
So don't watch then.
I never said I did watch it.
Is it so wrong to have an opinion about someone?
I never said I did watch it.
You must watch his feminist videos to have an opinion about the videos enough to call them "dribble" and have the opinion that he "takes it too far".
Is it so wrong to have an opinion about someone?
No, but what you have done here is effectively question my posting of a top notch science video because you don't like some of the guys videos that are completely unrelated. You are effectively dismissing all of the guys work because you don't like some of it, that to me is just asinine.
I note that you didn't refute my statement that his science and debunking videos are first class.