Using vinegar to grow a weird tower

With just some regular vinegar, I'm gonna make hot ice, which I think is pretty fun.

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[willabyuberton]

I love the idea of NileRed just mixing vinegar and baking soda and calling it a day at that.

[Nix.Lumina]

Nile's "And I think that's pretty cool" brings me immense amounts of serotonin

[PierceArner]

I love that just from the crystalization, I could instantly recognize it from being used in instant hot packs. Any super saturation setup makes for such a neat reaction, just like watching purified liquid water suddenly reacting below it's freezing temperature to all crystalize at once.

[JunkyardBashSteve]

I used to have these reusable hot packs that had a little metal disc in them. Press down on the disc until it popped, and watch the colored fluid inside turn into crystals that produced heat. Once it cooled off, you'd place the pack into boiling water until it all remelted into fluid and you could go again.

[oliviaie]

the world becomes a better place whenever nigel posts

[Wotah]

Finally something that i can do at home without poisoning whole neighborhood 💀

[huzudra]

You can also start the crystal reaction with a sharp force such as tapping a stir rod against the bottom of the beaker very firmly, the commercial hot packs use a metal snap inside to start the reaction. It would be neat to see how many different weird ways you can start the crystallization! Sound? Laser? Hitting the outside of the beaker?

[Trolligi]

As a tower myself I can confirm that this is correct

[budi]

My reusable hot packs did become solid when you "snap" that little coin inside and produce heat.

To turn it back to liquid all you need is to boil it back in hot water until it all melted then left it to cool down to room temperature.

You can reuse it as hot packs when you "snap" (rather "click") that small tiny metal piece inside the pouch and they'll start heating up again and solidify.

[Lukey_Starzz]

I've seen other channels do this experiment where the towers formed are really impressive, but I haven't actually seen anyone slice that tower until now, and it looks even more impressive.
Good job, NileRed!

[westie]

Thank you Nigel! So nice to see a short that is like back when you started. Just fun, fascinating science. Love it!!

[alanbunbun]

big W for chemistry fans today
(me, a junior chemistry major - somewhat motivated by your insane projects and a drive to know how the hell most of the chem you do works)

[defnotOB]

I found this guys channel on Christmas and have loved his channel ever since. Glad to have some fresh new content during the start of 2023. Thanks Nile!

[OfficiallySnek]

Nigel created a supersaturated solution. He did this by boiling the water away from the sodium acetate, which created a solution that contains more than the maximum amount of solute that is capable of being dissolved. This means that the crystals want to form, but they can't, they need something to start the crystallization prosses. This is why a seed crystal was used. The "seed" allows for the crystals to start forming onto it, eventually crystallizing the whole solution. This is kind of similar to the experiment where you make water go beyond it's freezing point, and then initiate the crystallization of it with agitation or a seed crystal being a piece of ice.

[margaretzhu]

I remember doing something like this in my high school Chem lab, except it was with salt. Our procedure was that you make a saturated salt solution first and then heat it so that more salt could be added and dissolved. When it eventually cooled down, we added a single salt crystal and a bunch of crystals started forming. I believe that what made the sodium acetate structure so solid was that there was very little to no water. It basically became sodium acetate but in liquid state. So when he added the liquid to the crystal, all the sodium acetate fell out of the solution and crystallized around the single crystal, forming a strong structure. But then, I’m no expert and this is just my speculation/opinion. Love the video btw ❤.

[cameronbigley]

For reference, you'd need roughly 150g of baking soda (in excess) to neutralize the 2 liters of vinegar, assuming 5% concentration.

[ExtremeBirdTypography]

As soon as you said it generates a lot of heat, I recognized it from handwamers. Neat!

[OptimusPhillip]

As soon as I saw it recrystallize, I realized exactly what was happening. Technology Connections made a video about instant hot packs a little ways back, they're really cool to see.

[xcoder]

Usually it's done the other way round: You drop a bit of crystal into the solution (instead of pouring the solution onto the crystal) and watch the solution freeze, as that will really look as if you watch water freezing in fast motion.

[aristokat]

Happy New Year! I hope that everything has been well for you and your loved ones! Your videos have been missed! ❤️