Burning 50lbs of Thermite Made From 400 Soda Cans

Only on Cody's Lab: Just a cosy bonfire in my back yard... It seems my shovel is on fire...

Imagine walking along the street and you just see a guy giggling around a pool of molten, violently exothermic "lava", occasionally stirring it with a flaming shovel.

glad one of your videos blew up, you deserve it bro. love from all the long time subs

Cody, move the material around when youre cooling it. Same principal as quenching, if its stationary the steam jacket will protect it, need to move it around to constantly break the seal so the water can do its job!

2:12 Crazy to think this stuff used to be more expensive than gold, but now one can cast multi-pound ingots of it from casually discarded drink containers

Basically, you have a big chunk of pig iron. This is the end product of the iron smelteries along the Susquehanna River. Coal, iron sands and the wood for charcoal was brought down by train and barge from around Centralia and Halifax, smelted and poured into buildings with floors covered in a thick layer of sand (that would turn green from the iron contamination, similar to that used in the stems of Alsatian wine glasses). The slabs would be broken up and sold to blacksmiths, iron-wrights and steel mills, often finding it's way up to Pittsburgh. Pig iron is rather useless on as is, it takes another melt or a lot of really hot, folding and forge welding to become something strong enough to be used as anything other than a paper weight. The reason you take this intermediate step is because transporting it in this form removes a lot of weight and volume. The Susquehana Valley was the logical place to set up these foundries because it was the shortest distance, near a lot of water from the sources of all the materials needed and you can let gravity do most of the transportation for you.

Aaah ive missed your channel. So great to watch 12am before sleep. Calm , relaxing, cool, interesting and im learning something too

Cody is the adult that decided to do the things every engineer wanted to do as kids.

Reason for the lip lifting off the sand: The thin aluminum rim cooled faster than the thicker Iron center material. As such the rim material contracted first and then solidified. After that, the thick center material solidified and contracted pulling the rim material up off the ground. This is a problem that you need to consider when 3D-printing large metal parts, so much so that the print novel needs to have a live physics simulation running to compensate for thermal contraction. At the end of the day, it comes down to thermal contraction and geometry.

Me at the halfway mark: "Yeah, that was a pretty cool video. Nice one, Cody." Cody: (pulls out 50lb bucket of thermite) Me: 😳

When I was a kid (70 years ago), my dad (1903-1999), a physicist, electrical engineer, and inventor, taught me how to safely make and use some simple explosives. We lived in Lafayette, CA (east of Berkeley and Oakland) in a house on a 3/4-acre lot. In our big back yard I did many experiments. Back then, you could buy powdered aluminum at hardware stores, presumably to make silver-colored paint. But I used it in some greatt experiments. Mixed in the right proportions with easily obtained sulfur, and potassium chlorate (better than potassium nitrate), it could be ignited to make spectacular fireballs. Powdered zinc, and powdered magnesium (which I surreptitiously filed off an unignited incendiary bomb, a souvenir of Dad's from wartime trips to England, worked almost as well. A kid part of me is still nostalgic for those days.

"Ain't got any wood for a campfire; I'll just use some soda cans and black sand. "What are you, crazy?" "No, I'm Cody."

Cody originally got demonetised because he made gunpowder out of his own urine. Now that he has been monetised again, he's teaching us how to make thermite 😂 Never change, Cody. You're the best.

Since no one is talking about the intro, I appreciate your effort on it.

Who needs Minecraft when you can watch Cody's Lab?

Unfortunately I forgot about Cody the past year or 2 but as I was in the Northern mountains of Utah, I had a thought about Cody. I am happy he is still creating content. thank you for the many years of content from the years prior.

18:30 it is amazing that at this point you could just keep throwing more cans to keep a really warm fire.

Classic CodysLab; questionably safe science experiments in the back yard!

Little known fact...that stuff can burn in basements of buildings for months, but they don't like it when you remind people about that...

People: "You can't make lava in your backyard!" Cody: "Hold my beer...!"