The Spangler Effect - Dry Ice Science Part One Season 01 Episode 38

You probably guessed it.
It's Halloween, and Halloween is not just another day of the
week at the Spangler household.
It's like a religious experience.
We work on it for months and months.
We've got the coolest activities.
You're going to grab some dry ice and a whole bunch of stuff
that you're going to find around the house.
Because I'm going to show you how to be the hit of your next
Halloween party.
But you've got to start working right now.
I'm Steve Spangler, and I'm all about making science fun.
For the last 20 years, I've been teaching ways to turn
ordinary science experiments into unforgettable learning
experiences.
I have an amazing team who will do whatever it takes to
affect the way people think about science.
And to do that, I live by one motto--
make it big, do it right, give it class.

All of things you're going to learn how to do today could be
done in your kitchen.
And we could be doing this in the famous Spangler Effect
kitchen that you've all seen, but why would I when we're
here in Littleton, Colorado.
If you ever get a chance to come to Colorado, or at least
this part of it, you've got to stop at the greatest place in
the whole world.
It's called the Rankey Brothers.
These people take Halloween to a whole different level.
If you look behind me, this is what happens year round.
So the setting is perfect for us.
We've found some really cool things.
Don't tell them that I've actually walked the aisles and
found some other stuff.
The only thing you're going to have to get that's special is
about 10 pounds of dry ice.
Before I even get started, I know what your comments are
going to be.
Some of you are going to write in the comments, you
can make dry ice.
You simply get a fire extinguish-- no you can't.
OK, you probably can.
It's dumb.
It's $1.50 a pound at your local grocery store.
So it's easy.
You just need to go with some tools and be
prepared to bring it home.
If you just bring it home in this brown paper bag, you're
going to lose some.
So I would suggest a cooler would be fantastic.
So just a cooler that you take for a picnic,
something like that.
But you're going to need some other things as well.
So take your gloves.
Remember, dry ice is 110 degrees below zero Fahrenheit,
78.5 degrees below zero Celsius, super cold.
And you don't want touch it with your bare skin.
So the leather gloves are going to be perfect.
You're also going to need to have a hammer, because you're
going to break it up to some small pieces.
And a little protective eyewear would
be perfect as well.
Just break up into some small pieces.
This is exactly why you need that particular eyewear,
because you can find a little chip will come up and hit you
right in the eye.
You remember that it's called dry ice for a reason.
And that's because when it melts, it
doesn't actually melt.
It sublimes.
And the reason it sublimes is, it goes from a solid into a
gas, without going through the liquid phase.
It's actually frozen carbon dioxide.
So they take carbon dioxide gas.
They freeze it.
They of course compress it.
And you get dry ice.
So if you were to take this and put this on
a place like this--
[VIBRATING SOUND]
hear that sound?
Listen.
It's the greatest sound in the world.
That's screaming ice.
It's because this plate here is room temperature, 75
degrees or so.
But this dry ice, being 110 degrees below zero Fahrenheit
causes that plate to vibrate.
And you get this wonderful screaming sensation.
You can also do it this way as well.
Here's the hammer.
Listen to this.
[HIGHER PITCHED VIBRATING SOUND]
Kind of nice.
[VIBRATING SOUND]
Who doesn't think that's a great spooky sound?
If you're actually doing this as a science lesson, you're
going to want to do the same thing with the
regular chunk of ice.
Take a similar sized piece of ice, put it on a plate.
Put this piece of ice on another plate.
Put it someplace so that people can't go and touch it
with their bare skin.
At the end of the day, you're going to have a puddle of
water with the ice.
You're going to have absolutely nothing but just a
cold plate with the dry ice.
And of course, there's no way that real ice will make this
wonderful sound.
[VIBRATING SOUND]
Well here's what most people do.
They'll a container like this is.
They'll fill it with some ordinary tap water,
then the glove on.
Yes, you put the glove on.
You pick up the dry ice, drop it inside,
and you call it good.
It's your bubbling whatever.
It is good, but it's not great.
And the way that you can make it better is you change a
couple things.
First of all use warm water instead of cold water.
This water here will get cold fairly quickly.
So the warmer the water you start with, the better the
clouds that you get.
The other thing is the container.
If you're actually giving this to somebody to hold onto, I
think you want to be a little worried about them reaching
down inside and being able to possibly touch the dry ice.
I've got a better container.
You're just going to have to search.
This is a plastic graduated cylinder.
Now use some warm water in a plastic graduated cylinder,
and drop a few pieces of dry ice down inside here.
And the great thing about this is that you can hand it to a
kid for example, and they can't get their hand down
inside to be able to touch the dry ice.
Other thing is I like the little spout here, because
there's no that you can cap this at all.
Well, you try to cap it, but it shoots the little dragon's
breath out to the side.
The dangerous part, as you know, is that dry ice in water
and anything that gets contained of course produces
an incredible pressure.
So make sure that there's never any top that's on any
container that you have with dry ice, where it's not vented
and you can let some of the pressure out.
Warm water and, yeah, a little coloring is fine-- a little
food, coloring or fluorescent dye, or something.
You have the perfect spooky liquid.
Here's a great easy one to do that'll keep
kids busy for hours.
You're going to need to have a container of some kind.
This plastic bowl is perfect.
I'm using a graduated cylinder.
You could use any type of tall container.
Because we want this eruption of--
you'll see bubbles here in just a second-- to
come out of the top.
So start with your warm water.
Seems to be pretty good.
And for this one here, you don't want too much dry ice.
So just find a chunk of dry ice.
I think that that should be just about right.
And that goes down inside.
That will produce all of the bubbling that we need.
The only other thing that you need on top of that is a
little squirt of dish soap.
And probably some towels.
Just a little bit of that dish soap is all you need.
Because now the carbon dioxide that's being produced here
gets trapped in those bubbles.
And if you don't put a lot of it in there, and a lot of dry
ice, you get this little eruption that starts to come
up, which is a nice surprise.
But for those people who want to touch, now this is
perfectly safe.
Because you can actually pick up these bubbles here.
And when you squeeze, you release of that fog.
So here's what's happening.
That dry ice, of course, is bubbling away.
That carbon dioxide gas is being released.
And a small amount of that dish soap is all you need to
be able to trap all of that carbon dioxide in the air
inside here, so you almost get this fog-like effect that's
perfectly safe for people to touch.
It keeps them busy for hours.
Sure, you could do the bubbling thing with this sissy
little graduated cylinder.
But why would you, it's "The Spangler Effect." You need to
have one of these big bad boys.
That's a huge graduated cylinder.
I got it from [INAUDIBLE].
Just never took it back.
It just means it's going to have a whole lot more.
So here's the water.
Here's your dry ice, so this will be great.
We don't need any sissy action here.
We want good bubbling.
And now, a nice little shot of that soap.
This will be perfect.
See, I told you would be great.
Isn't this--
the problem is I don't know how to actually make it stop.
Hey kid, do you want this?
Your mom said-- oh my god--
see you.

This next thing is called boo bubbles.
You're going to want to make this thing.
It's a dry ice fog generator.
You're just going to need to head to the local hardware
store and get a few supplies.
Here's what you're going to need, a little
towel to start with.
Because we're going to allow the bubbles to be
able to rest on here.
This is the dry ice fog generator.
So here's what I did.
I just found this plastic jar.
And to the plastic jar, I cut a hole in the side of the
plastic jar and walked around the hardware store until I
could find a fitting that I could easily put into the
plastic jar and attach it from the other side.
So I hooked this together, along with a piece of hose.
And the end of the piece hose is just another fitting that I
found in the plumbing department.
I just want a way to be able to put the bubble solution
around here, and dip some bubble solution in here so
that we can possibly blow a bubble out this end.
So we'll start with dry ice and warm water in here.
We're not going to take this and put it back on.
It's vented, so it wouldn't do anything bad.
But I'm actually used the lid as a way to be able to control
the flow of the carbon dioxide.
Start by making some bubble solution.
You're going to take a small little container.
You could use a glasses, a plastic cup.
Some water, and it's not technical at all.
Just a squirt of the dish soap.
And that should be perfect.
So now it's time to make some fog.
You're going to use your fog generator, so warm water.
It doesn't have to be a tremendous amount, just enough
to be able to cover the bottom there.
And our pieces of dry ice down inside--
a couple good-sized chunks should be perfect.
I think that's pretty good, nice.
And now I'm going to use the lid to be able to cover it up.
And remember when I cover it up here,
it's got to go somewhere.
So that's where the fog, or this dry ice smoke, carbon
dioxide, comes out.
It's also a great exfoliant.
So you don't need the gloves anymore.
Now what I'm going to do is take the end and dip it into
the bubble solution like this.
So it just coats it.
And now use the cap to be able to cover it
up and try to force--
that's perfect, look at this--
to force the carbon dioxide into the bubble.
Perfect, these are boo bubbles.
Notice how it doesn't pop when it sits here.
Well, some of them don't pop.
If you'll remember the bubble episode, we talked about the
strength of a bubble.
And we used that glove to create that bouncing bubble.
It's the same thing that's happening here.
You're just taking the towel and using it to be able to
support the bubble.
Remember the towel doesn't have any real
oils or a lot of dirt.
And it supports the bubble fairly nicely.
No special glycerine or anything like that.
We're just using regular bubble solution.
I got an idea.
If you could bring this up to your hand once again, you
might be able to play with now a boo bubble in your hand.
Higginsworth, get a glove.
Here is your little toy for doing such a
good job on the show.
There's your toy.
Bounce it, come on, bounce.
Now take that back, and you can play with
that in your room.
Go to your room.
You broke it.
All right, the boo bubble generator is a great if you're
going to have a small little party there.
But if you want big oohs and ahs you need
a big bubble generator.
This is a large water jug.
And I've put the dry ice in the warm water inside.
And then, I found this hose.
I don't even know I found it.
I just borrowed it from somebody.
And so the hose goes over the top, like this.
Got it?
And now the fog easily comes out this end, here.
So here's what we're going to need to do.
Is to get to this controlled so I can cause the bubbles to
come out and make a large bubble here on the table.
So you dip the end into the bubble solution here.
And now let's see if we can make a large bubble.
Now it may take a little practice.
But you can create this massive bubble here.
And if you can pull it off here like this, it may even
just stay there.
Perfect, look.
There's our bubble.
And tell me that's not cool.
Well if you're looking for something to do at the very
end of the party that's cool for all the guests, don't
forget our little vortex ring launcher, using dry ice, a
Solo cup, and the membrane that's on the other
side here, like this.
You pop them here and you get these beautiful
little vortex rings.
Have a great Halloween.
Is that it?
Is that all I have to do?
I hate Halloween.

Look at this.
The bubble actually fills with the carbon
dioxide gas, like this.
That's a cool boo bubble.