we are going to turn sand into glass. I jumped down in the comments, and I found this one from JC112 …
already begging that we would make glass out of sand
Today we are going to try to make it happen for you. Now to make this happen today …
I had to bring my friend Cody from Cody’s lab. You know him. Alright everyone.
We also have Andy from a channel called How to Make …
Everything you know him as the man who took six months to make a chicken sandwich.
He did everything from scratch, including growing the grain and spawning the chicken. On my channel I explore …
what if you could not go to a store and buy stuff needed to make it from natural sources?
Sweet so I am looking for this. It’s a bit like I do not know what you’re calling like Power Rangers? *laughter*
We have just like all the forces to merge here to see that we have accomplished one great …
task. Because it is not very easy to turn …
sand in glass. Is the? Certainly not clear glass. This will actually be my fourth attempt. I have tried different things …
Use a different flux pot of hardwood ash. This is my first attempt with soda ash and …
hopefully we have some better results. So for this video we are going to put everything to the test …
we are going to use raw materials that Andy originates. We are going to use the materials that refined cody.
We are going to put all of them together and see if we can actually make clear glass today with our backyard trash …
foundry. Let’s dive right in. Okay, so I have ingredients from four different states I actually have sand I collected in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Then collected in Wyoming I soda ash and sodium sulfate from a lake there. Arizona…
I collected plaster from an old mine. In Utah Cody helped me find some calcite. So my role …
here is actually the chemistry man. I helped Andy purify his soda ash I also …
helped him to purify the sand a bit and also coming from the …
nitric acid we convert to a calcium nitrate by conversion with …
some more calcite. Oh, and if we do not have enough we might cheat a bit. *laughter*
So the time has come guys we are going to take all these ingredients …
and we’re going to mix them all up and here’s how we’re going to do it.
We are going to take this sand that had already taken mainly iron …
we are going to mix it with some of this sodium …
carbonate and add a little calcium nitrate and a little bit of plaster.
We are going to crush it all in a very fine powder.
Mix the mixture together throw it into the crucible and let the whole thing nuke for about 6 to 12 hours in our waste …
can foundry. This is the kind of glass that nature makes this obsidian that originates from a volcano …
And you can see that this is totally not transparent. Clear glass is a very cool thing and we are going to replicate it here today.
So I think I’m mixing the other materials.
Here is the sand I think we’re just going to mix these together.
Child from guessing to the proportions. I’m going to try to shoot for about 30 percent of the weight …
sodium carbonate.
Which I will crush into a fine powder here.
Hulk battle! Hulk battle!
Who has a mortar and pestle?
It is actually to crush pretty well. I mean, my knuckles start to hurt and bleed a bit but …
I think it’s worth it. *laughter*
This is the industrial revolution baby, two fists twice as fast synergy.
Okay, so I mixed the ingredients together now.
Since the sand is still a bit wet the weight will not be right. So it really does not make sense to weigh it.
I am just kind of mix an equal volume of sand and sodium carbonate. Like a one-to-one ratio? Good…
This is a lot less dense than this and we only need about twenty to thirty percent soda ash, so …
I could use this all
The more of this we use the lower the melting temperature. So the easier ..
it will be to melt this. See this is the kind of cooking I enjoy as we cook with recipes from Lab Cody’s.
Okay, so a bit of plaster this will release some gases at the end and that will …
positive help ..
with the other gases that are released. So just to make it clear that is the crystal that we have crushed before.
Exactly. So a solid form, powder form.
It is a great difference. Yes. This is the last ingredient but a little bit of calcium nitrate.
This is a…
oxidizer that will help burn impurities and hopefully it will turn the sand from a sort of a beige color …
in pure white and then it will melt to erase. Let’s just sprinkle a bit of that.
Does not really matter if I add too much, because then it will burn.
let’s mix it up
Oh! Actually there is another ingredient we miss that is the lime.
So here is the lime.
This is actually hydrated lime or calcium hydroxide this is what happens when you add the calcium oxide to water and this will be us …
lime part of the soda lime glass.
Now we are probably not going to add much, because it will raise the melting point, so it will increase …
chemical resistance of the glass.
Making it not soluble in water
So yes, we only add a few percent.
It will not be the best …
drinking glass, but it will probably work for …
It will look yes, pretty good for a window or whatever.
Alright there it is.
Still a bit wet, but I think that will work.
We have our powder ground ready to go, our melting pot is still pretty hot, we fired it earlier …
it is ready to go. So let’s mix it all together fire from the foundry and get ready to rock. Yes!
That sand looks a lot more white now that you’re mixing everything up. Yes.
So now Andy because this is your fourth attempt. Why do not you tell us what’s going to happen here today?
I am still pretty skeptical, it has changed in our ‘White Whale’ of actually making clear glass.
I think we are pretty close.
I am pretty sure of Cody’s ability to actually refine things.
But I expect that it is not going to be perfectly a few pairs of bubbles.
But I think we’re pretty close. That is of course the assumption that the foundries are going to be hot enough to actually get his work done.
So we’re going to put it to the test.
We’re going to throw everything in, fire this thing put the cap on and …
actually just leave this on high heat for about 6 to 12 hours.
Alright. Put that in there. Just like a little bit of insurance …
I am going to go to a second batch of glass, to have a slightly different composition. You have another oven here.
And if this does not work out well, we’ll have something else that …
I think that’s a bit more likely to turn off that nice clear glass. Oh, so it’s the competition from the equipment?
*laughter*
So, for the second party I got some sand, which is probably a bit more pure …
and I’m going to mix this with, instead of a soda lime …
I’m going to use soda lid, so this is a mix here of lead oxide so PbO and …
sodium carbonate. This is actually very heavy, because this is more than half a lid here.
So I’m just going to mix this in with the sand.
And this would make theoretical crystal glass
This must melt at a lower temperature, so I think we might be a bit more lucky with it.
Here we go. Let’s put this in the other oven. Got the melting pot here …
heat in the oven.
Just to pull this out and add our material
That hopefully flux down makes something that looks like clear glass. I only have this kind of go next.
When it gets up to 2,000 degrees.
It must melt.
Okay.
OK. We are waiting. Hopefully we get something good.
Okay, guys, it’s the moment of the truth our foundry has been running for six and a half hours.
So this has been completely melted. We stopped there a few times …
released from the lid and tap the crucible a few times to raise the bubbles the top theoretically.
We are not quite sure how clear the glass is yet. But we have a number of tools …
we are going to use it to pull it out and see if we can blow mold it and maybe …
a small improvised window. Let’s see what we have.
WOOAAAH !!
My god, that’s hot, hot stuff.
Oh that’s cool. Just like that? It’s drippy, drippy wet
Oh wow, is that metal?
Cody: Yes it is.
Oh that’s cool. Is it going to stick to the samples? No?
Cody: I dunno.
Okay, so we made the transfer. We got the glass in a small bin. Let’s talk about what just happened.
We got two pieces of glass in our container at the moment. One is from the trash foundry …
we had a little trouble with it because when I touched the side of the melting pot in the heat …
It got sticky and then it works around it actually small pieces of wool got stuck to it.
So it was not very clear and we tried to puree it down, it was very hard and started cracking, all kinds of problems.
But we think we saved. Walked through a few parties and put it in a container where it can cool without …
burst. also got the other bit of glass with the stained glass.
Eventually I poured that out onto the plate along with a lot of lead because it had reacted with the crucible and threw metallic …
lead. We just poured that on a steel plate, crushed it down and then transfer it to the container too.
So only time will tell now. We are going to give about half an hour to cool down …
and then take a look at what we have received. So while the glass is cooling …
we put it in a bucket full of vermiculite. That is going to help that cooling it a bit slower pace …
it involves helping the heat stay as long as possible to prevent the glass from bursting. Now…
ideally would like to actually glow …
this glass so it will not crack in the future. If you use this as a rhombus it would eventually crack …
due to the weather the temperature things of nature. So it should be tempered for this video …
we just want to show proof of concept and I think we did.
Check it out Guys. We have successfully converted sand into glass.
We are most of the way there.
We have as a bit of a green tint to this which means that there is still a bit of iron in there.
But for the most part this stuff looks good, and it is certainly glass. Look at this piece of Cody here …
It is very similar to a lens. This is Bachelet Cody was the stained glass. It really has a cool blue tint to it …
it is very interesting. There are a number of bubbles in there …
but it is clear, it is pretty clear. So maybe if we cook that longer we could have gotten it even more transparent.
Small bits of lead stuck in there.
Gives you a whole new appreciation, such as windows and glass bottles and things that are everywhere. Certainly.
So we also tried to blow part of the lead glass and put it at the end of the rod …
and we blew an air bubble inside of it. It actually looks like a small flower vase.
Where you can grow your small apple seeds!
This actually turned out to be pretty good. That is cool. I like the blue tint too. And we also have a little marble, a little purple marble.
I do not know where the colors come from? You know my guess is probably cause ‘it had lead on the pan.
* Incomprehensible * But that’s cool, how cool is that we made our own marbles.
So marbles, very small flowerpots, broken glass are all part of an epic adventure.
So let’s have a second and briefly summarize. How we are at this point today.
We started with sand Andy collected from the Mississippi River. He brought it here and used Cody to help purify some of the …
chemicals and we put it in the trash can foundry and leave it for almost 7 hours.
We have noticed that the sand is actually in molten glass within about half an hour. We stirred it up a bit …
and we watched it and gave it about 6 hours after that to melt down and hopefully let some of those bubbles release.
Now just for fun we come down into the melting pot with a steel bar …
we got that little glass out and …
tried to roll into a ball and then flatten it out of the idea maybe we could make some sort of a makeshift piece …
window? I’m not really sure that’s what we got, but we definitely have glass and if you look at it …
it is relatively transparent, a bit of a green tint, but all in all it is not so bad considering …
we just have this in our backyard. It is certainly glass, and it is certainly transparent you can see through it, but …
has a few bells, so it is not quite as optically clear, not ideal for lenses, but … really close.
And I think that a little more tweaking and baking in the oven …
and we probably have it. Would even be able to crush this and melt it now. Because now this glass is ..
it will be much easier to work with now.
I think if we had maybe a bit more skills with the glass work. We would have been able to do it.
Yes. So it is not clear glass, but it is glass we can crush this up.
We could melt away that we can use it again.
And this is really only a first attempt to work any kind of glass at all.
I think that if our skills improve and we happen to run into the right people with the right kind of talents ….
maybe we can actually make it crystal clear glass. That is the goal, that is the end achievement.
We are just starting on that journey. It is already a lot of fun
Thanks Andy and Cody for joining us for this experiment today. As I mentioned …
I have put their tapes in the description that you are going to check on their channels.
They do some incredible things on their channel as Andy spending six months to make a chicken sandwich.
So that you can enjoy what is in it. And Cody doing all kinds of mind-blowing chemical experiments a lot of things that you should not …
at home That’s why I like them. So I want these guys.
Of course a big shout-out to our friend …
JC112 who put this request in the comments and got more than 1100 likes good work man.
Go check your YouTube inbox for sending $ 25. Thank you for joining us for this experiment today.
We are looking for the next one. Do you speak?
You are a wizard Harry!
Hey guys, there is an event called CVX Living that I will be on August 3 by the 5th. Meet and greet internship presentations …
there is even a special superfan experience where we can hang out one-on-one.
So click on the link in the description and I will search for you on CVX Live.
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