Today, we're going
to test what happens
if you put burning charcoal
into a vacuum chamber.
Are they going to keep burning?
Will they go out?
Let's find out what changes.
[Music]
YouTuber Donta Sharp asked
what would happen
if we put hot coals
in a vacuum chamber.
Donta, we don't know,
and so we are going
to find out.
We've got some hot coals.
We've got a vacuum chamber.
Let's see what they do.
We got a camera
and a light going inside.
Let's see what happens
when you turn on the vacuum.
There's a tornado in there.
We should film all sorts
of things inside vacuum chamber.
I see glowing.
There's orange starting to show
up on the edge of those coals.
Oh, yeah.
That's picking up.
They're starting to glow.
Good airflow.
[Music]
There's charcoal in one type
of vacuum chamber.
Now, I'm sure
what you meant was putting in
a low pressure vacuum chamber,
and of course,
we're going to do that too.
Let's talk about how.
As a control,
we are just going to put
some unlit charcoal
into our chamber to see
how that's different.
My prediction is
that we won't be able
to see any change.
Nothing will move.
We'll just have
the charcoal sitting in there.
And that's okay.
The point of this
isn't actually to see
what happens in low pressure.
It's the see
what happens in low oxygen.
And once those are burning,
that should make a difference.
Now to me,
that didn't look
like a whole lot changed,
which as I said is
what we expected.
Unburning charcoal,
doesn't do much in vacuum.
Now, let's test burning,
and like I said,
we're going to do this
in a few different ways.
We're going to have
burning charcoal down
in our vacuum chamber,
sitting on top of some kaowool,
so that the heat isn't directly
transferred into the glass.
We're going to
take another chamber,
same size and shape,
and we're going to put
some more charcoal in that.
In that one,
we're also going to add
a bit of dry ice.
Hopefully, that will just
flood the entire inside
with carbon dioxide,
and we can see the difference
between a non-oxygen environment
and a carbon
dioxide environment.
Then we'll have one final set
of charcoal off the side,
also not in a jar.
It will be exposed to the air,
but we're going to use our shop
vac to blow air onto it.
So it has sort of an extra
oxygen enriched environment.
I figured that will give
us a good spread
from high oxygen down to no
or opposing oxygen environments.
We'll see which charcoals
burn the fastest,
and we've got
a temperature gun to see what
the difference is in heat.
Here's the basic idea.
We're going to take
some burning charcoal,
we'll put it
in a vacuum chamber,
another chamber
with carbon dioxide,
a pile charcoal just
sitting in the air,
and some more charcoal with
added air being blown on it.
One idea that we did have
was actually to use
pure oxygen to show
what that did with the charcoal.
There's a couple of reasons
we're not going to do that.
One, this is not a very
common situation.
The air around us is actually
not a pure oxygen environment.
Most of it is nitrogen with
some oxygen, carbon dioxide,
and other elements
floating around in it.
The other reason is
that these tanks aren't free,
and we actually go through them
really quickly while trying
this experiment out.
We are hoping to let things run
a little bit longer than that,
but we did want to show you
what happens when we
put a pure oxygen stream
onto one of these burning
pieces of charcoal.
It's pretty neat.
[Music]
You can already see how
much it heats the coal up,
and gets it burning better.
But watch what happens
as I get the oxygen even closer,
making it more intense.
[Music]
This wasn't a
brand-new canister,
but it is now empty.
Like I said, it goes
through it really quickly.
Look at that.
Where I was blowing
the oxygen right in, it just,
it burns so well and intensely
that just tunneled
right down through.
Also, it really sparks a lot.
I think it burned me
through my glove a little bit.
[Music]
Okay, now we're going
to fill this chamber
with carbon dioxide
by using the dry ice.
So we're just gonna let
this overflow down
into that chamber a little bit.
[Music]
Of course now,
the GoPro can't see anything,
but it'll clear out really soon.
[Music]
Lot of vapor in there.
[Music]
Using dry ice down
into there as well.
At that point,
there should be almost
exclusively carbon dioxide
in that chamber without really
any oxygen or nitrogen,
or any of those other things.
[Music]
Our thermometer is currently
showing our outside charcoal
at 850 degrees, approximately.
That's in Fahrenheit.
That's warm.
Okay, this puts
out a lot of air.
We're going to be blowing
that on the charcoal,
and it's going to start glowing
orange like immediately.
[Music]
All right, quick update.
If you remember,
we are getting
about 880 degrees
Fahrenheit with the charcoal
just sitting there.
Let's look at what it
is with the charcoal
we've been hitting with the air.
1,300 degrees Fahrenheit.
[inaudible]
For a second, it was at 1,300.
It's already dropping,
but that was 500
degrees Fahrenheit hotter
just from the vacuum.
That's a lot.
[Music]
It's been 10, maybe 12 minutes
that we've been letting all four
of these types run,
and we want to do
a temperature update.
Sorry about the noise.
The vacuum is running,
and we do want
to let it keep going.
But we're going to do a check.
Oh, no, we lost them.
Well, let's do
a check of this one.
All right.
The moment this tiny one
is only registering 1,100--
Oh, 1,200 for a second.
Before, when all
three were stacked,
this registered at over
1,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
So we're going to put
that at 1,500 because those
just barely got blown over.
Let's check the ones
just sitting out.
All right,
between 790 and 850 is kind of
what we're getting here.
Our carbon dioxide.
287.
Wow, that is 220 down there.
That's like barely
hot enough to boil water.
This has gone way down.
So under 300, definitely.
All right, we are going
to let are back into this one.
I'm gonna try and do it slowly
so it doesn't fan
the charcoal too much.
255.
So like the carbon
dioxide environment,
this is really
suffering on heat.
We've let some hot coals sit out
in the open air for a while,
and we've gotten to the point
where they're really
falling apart.
They're mostly made of ash
so I figure that's
a good time to compare
how they are to the ones
in our carbon dioxide chamber
and our vacuum chamber.
Let's take a look.
[Music]
Most of our mass
is gone from those.
They've burned down
most to the ash,
so let's do a comparison.
We already looked at the ones
that we're blowing with a vacuum,
and those just,
it took 10 minutes maybe,
and there's just
down to this size,
maybe even smaller.
Gotta say, preliminarily,
our charcoal in
here doesn't look
like it's been burning
very much compared to this.
It's about the size
that they went in.
So we've got thousand
degrees surface temperature
on these ones.
80 degrees surface temperature
in these ones.
All right, that--
I'm going to risk this,
and just grab it
with my fingers.
[Music]
That's--
I mean, that's just out.
There is no burning
left to this.
The carbon dioxide put
that charcoal out completely.
There's--
It's not on fire.
It's-- I wouldn't call
that a hot coal anymore.
That's just left over charcoal.
No longer burning.
All right, let's check
our vacuum chamber.
Also 92,
and that is really similar
to the carbon dioxide one.
Okay, I'm going
to risk it again.
Pull that out.
This one feels
a tiny bit warmer,
just like a couple of degrees.
Like it does feel slightly warm
compared to the dry ice ones,
which just didn't
feel warm at all.
They felt fairly cool.
But again, no danger
in me holding this.
They're not hot.
They are not going to burn me.
Nothing is glowing.
There's no ember left.
Those are out.
Donta Sharp, thank you
for your suggestion
of putting hot coals
in a vacuum chamber.
I think we learned
some interesting things.
It was really cool
to see what it did.
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