Oh I believe it. That big scary capacitor. I only really left it open so that I could have a fan blowing on the electrical components.

kzfaq.info/get/bejne/eLmFgKVzq9Dcoo0.html

Beautiful haiku.

@@Ninth_Penumbra after posting the video, someone told me that borosilicate can have that light blue color. I didn't know at the time. It's crazy how mixing two different colored chemicals can make a completely unrelated color. I watched a lot of chem videos but I never really internalized that until I did it myself.

Yes, a ceramasist friend of mine opened my mind to the phenomenon of molten materials having their own chemistry (of course). Glass becomes corrosive when molten. ​ I had no idea microwaves are useful for heating anything but water. I know they depend upon resonating with water molecules creating internal heat in food items. Thanks. @FreedomOfDegree

I did experiment a little with silicon carbide powder. I was hoping that I could add it directly to the mixture and it would heat up enough that I wouldn't have to pre heat it with the torch. I could never get the silicon carbide hot enough on its own. I didn't know microwave kilns were a thing, that's pretty cool.

Yes it can boil over as you suggest. The borax has water in it, the bicarbonate off gases CO2 as it decomposes, and there's a reaction with the carbonate and boric acid, because one is slightly acidic, and the other slightly basic.

@@nunyabisnass1141 you know what. I can't believe I didn't even notice that I mixed an acid and a base...

That might destroy everything.

Thanks! There definitely were unknown fumes when I heated the sand from the stream. I don't think the boric acid or the sodium bicarbonate would give off too much. Maybe some CO2 or water. They might have been vaporizing as well but I feel it was well ventilated enough for those.

Had no idea that they put iron in regular glass. That's pretty cool. I mean, it's probably pretty well researched, but I wonder what colors other metals might make?

@@FreedomOfDegree With rare earth metals, you can make glass do fancy colours and effects.

I was looking into one effect. Like uranium glass but for infrared. Photon upconversion. However, I've yet to find a source of the materials I'd need. Of course I could probably just but the nano particles flat out, but where's the fun in that?

Thanks! (Tips fedora emoji)

Exactly right. I didn't really show it because I felt it was a drag on the pace of the video, but I did fiddle around with the placements a lot just to get to work. In some cuts you might notice that the thing I'm heating moves slightly. That's usually because it was heating only one side or something and I just centered it. If I end up visually cutting something like this in the future, I'll try to at least make a comment about it in the video.

@@danacraig2535 Well, I can at least be pretty certain that the screws turned the glass green because the glass that formed further from the screws stayed that nice light blue. At the same time, I can be fairly certain that the increased quartz also was the reason for the resulting glass was much more viscous, as the part that seemed to have much less iron from the screws had the same observable viscosity. Yes, I agree that by changing 2 variables simultaneously, it is impossible to be absolutely sure which was responsible for a changed result, if not both together. However, I feel that under certain circumstances, more can be learned in a shorter amount of time by changing multiple parameters at once. Plus, If someone were to test a single one of these 2 parameters, say the larger quartz ratio, then the other result (green glass from iron) could be implied. In the end you'd need 2 experiments either way.

😏

When I find a way to protect the firebricks from the molten glass, I will absolutely make another video because I want to see just how hot I can get it. *edit: another video about this topic, I've got more on the way regardless 😉"

I did consider it. After having all my firebricks melt, I started thinking about ways to protect the brick. The best I could think of was to coat the top of the furnace, and the bottom of the lid with the same stuff the crucible was made out of, but that's a bit beyond my ability. There definitely were hot spots. I spent a lot of time moving the samples around just trying to get them to heat up at all. For that, maybe we could change the shape of the microwave oven. Instead of a box, we could make it a thin-ish (2-4 inch diameter) cylinder that is about the wavelength of the microwaves. That way the hot spot would be more reliably and understandably located.

@@FreedomOfDegree Yeah, I've always wondered about that as well. Can you modify the shape of a microwave to focus all the energy in one spot. It's fun trying to come up with ways to do that. A standing wave in a tube sounds like a good way to go. However, I wouldn't dare open up a microwave, modify how the radiowaves travel, and be anywhere near that thing when it turns on 😅 Even if I do think I grasp most of the physics behind it, and you can make a fine metal mesh all around it (like the one usually in the door behind the glass), and still I would feel like I was forgetting something 😛 To find the hotspots, I've seen people using things like chocolate sprinkles on a plate and see some places melt and others untouched, but that's just one 2d slice. I always wondered if you put a big block of styrofoam in it filling the chamber, if all the hot spots would melt so you can see them. Not sure styrofoam heats up though. Or else a giant block of cheese :D Oh and you have to slice it up after to explore the inside of the block otherwise you can't see where it melted.

@@FreedomOfDegree I found another interesting thing on wikipedia.org/wiki/Melting_point : "Melting points are often used to characterize organic and inorganic compounds and to ascertain their purity. The melting point of a pure substance is always higher and has a smaller range than the melting point of an impure substance or, more generally, of mixtures. The higher the quantity of other components, the lower the melting point and the broader will be the melting point range, often referred to as the "pasty range"." I wonder how much the melting point shifts with impurity. Assuming store bought glass is more pure than your own mixture, can you just use a jam jar, and have your powdermix melt before the jar melts? It might be less sticky on the glass surface, and you can see what happens while trying it.

@@FreedomOfDegree You can locate the hotspots with a bag of shredded cheese. They're 3D regions, though, so lock in the right height and mark the oven. Google 'measuring speed of light with microwave', it's a popular demonstration- cheese, chocolate, hotdogs, to name a few I've seen. I don't think modifying the oven is the way to go here- It's exciting/interesting, but it's also a distraction. Even if it weren't dangerous (and omg it is and absolutely will kill you if you let it), there's still plenty of science to explore here before going off to wherever a custom oven takes you. In the interest of prototyping/exploring the properties of your set up, try smashing good reclaimed glass (empty salsa jar, spent beers) and melting it down. Do one experiment at a time; Get your brick/crucible/oven situation sorted so that you're confident in your procedure for getting flowing glass, then start fooling around with ingredients. I know it's not as click baity to do them separately, but you can combine them in the edit, and the reclaimed glass will make great B-roll.

I don't think microwaves are that scary. @mrgreenguy did a really good video on the subject: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ac5yhduotr7Rc4U.html I also think the "shotgun method" can be valuable when doing science, especially when you are fairly certain that the multiple variables that you changed are not likely to interfere with each other. For instance, the last run I did, I used a much larger amount of silica in the mixture. I expected it to make the liquid glass less runny. I also threw in the steel security screws. I did not expect them to mix with the glass. In the end, the glass was much less runny, and took on a very pretty green color. While I can't say for sure that the additional silica is the reason it was much thicker because I added the screws, I have very good reason to believe that that is the case, because I think it's unlikely the screws had such an effect on the mixture.

Thank you 😘

I put on the glasses.

@@peteward6478 science is fun and accessible, just be safe ☺️.

Well, if you want to get technical, I'm pretty sure the fire bricks are alumina which should melt higher than silica, but I'm absolutely sure that the little dishes are silica and they didn't melt or dissolve 🤷‍♀️

@@FreedomOfDegree How strange! The bricks I put into my parent's house were aerated something something silica, hence my mistake, but have you worked out what could be vitrifying the lids yet? I'm really cuirous now!

@@InservioLetum I've read that sometimes alumina is added to glass to manipulate its properties. So I think some glass is getting out of the dish and dissolving it like a drop of water on cotton candy. Specifically for the lid, I noticed that the glass mixture was smoking when I removed the lid. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but looking back, some of the parts of the mixture may have been vaporizing and then condensing on the (relatively) cool lid. That or liquid chemicals would spatter onto the lid from the gasses that were released as the mixture was heated.

First of all, I'd like to apologize in advance for this huge wall of text. I think it'd actually be the other way around. When the microwave is empty, it will form standing waves which should reduce power consumption which should also reduce the amount of heat generated by components in the microwave. But when I put something in, say water, the microwaves induce the molecules of water to align themselves to the field. Doing this takes energy, reducing the energy stored in the standing waves, as well as the energy resisting additional wave generation, allowing more power to flow through the components. At least that's my hypothesis, and now you've made me super curious as to whether or not power consumption increases or decreases when something is put inside the microwave. Might make a video testing that.

Allegedly, the fire bricks I used were made of alumina, which should withstand up to 2,000C. But because the steel screws that I threw in didn't melt, I think the glass was somehow chemically eating the bricks instead. I didn't try using metal as a container because it would simply block the microwaves. I might be able to get away with a single 2D sheet, but as soon as we have a 3D shape, we'd start casting shadows.

@@FreedomOfDegree hint, the walls are steel sheet :) as in mirror wave box. also if the bricks are alumina, then there might be super hot drops every now and then which would eat through anything. like plasma. I mean if you use steel or copper sheet, that would spread the possible high heat spots so that the metal would not melt. if not, try MgO fire bricks, they are up to 3100C.

@@FreedomOfDegree it could just be that the fire bricks are made of SiO2 not aluminium oxide alumina. that would explain why it melts with the glass.

@@gsestream If I were to put 2 sheets of metal at a right angle, it would create a sort of ambient occlusion, where light would have trouble reaching the corner even in a mirror box. This problem only amplifies with each addition piece of geometry. I'm sure there's some way to manipulate the geometry such that it minimally affects (or maybe even amplifies) the microwaves, but that's way above my pay grade. I didn't know about MgO. It does have a significantly higher melting point than alumina, but if the glass truly is dissolving it, then I see no reason it shouldn't dissolve the MgO as well. Surprisingly, the little dishes I used are basically pure silica and have no problem handling the heat, which is why I think the glass is melting the bricks chemically rather than thermally. Of course it could also be that the bricks are melting like cotton candy while the dish is more like trying to melt a rock. *edit: will def keep the MgO in mind next time, cuz I want to get it as hot as possible 😘

@@FreedomOfDegree yes yes. but only one, below the glass stuff only.

I'll look into them. But directly heating the glass feels like it heats up faster and maybe even hotter. The main way I thought I could improve my design was to cover all the fire bricks with a layer of the same stuff the crucibles were made of (quartz ceramic I think). But I'm not sure if the fire bricks might spontaneously catalytically melt at such high temperatures.

​@@FreedomOfDegreeI will subscribe to see how you go :)