[TheBackyardScientist] at it again with another super villain-esque demonstration of gadgetry: a liquid metal squirt gun.
The squirt gun has a compressed air tank like most others — more on that later — but to fire its primary ammunition, a nozzle that connects directly to an air compressor is needed. Again, like most guns of this nature, air is forced into the gun’s reservoir, displacing the pewter and expelling it out the gun’s barrel. Yes, pewter.
Working around the heat tolerances of thread seal tape, pewter has a low enough melting point that an airtight system is preserved — plus it’s really cool to fire a stream of liquid metal. The ammunition is made from pewter ware melted down and cast into pucks. These pucks are stacked into the gun’s magazine, melted with a propane torch and carefully loaded into the gun.
The built-in compressed air tank lacks the oomph to push out the pewter — hence the air compressor, but any lighter liquids or condiments are fair game for rapid-fire exercises. Yes, condiments.
Due to the low melting point of pewter, a humble pane of glass — or even, yes, a watermelon — can effectively stand up to the onslaught, but you probably don’t want to unleash this during the next water fight.
The last time we featured [TheBackyardScientist]’s shenanigans involving pewter he was casting it into weapons. If you have access to a 3D printer, you can cast yourself some pretty intricate designs.
[Thanks for the awesome tip, Itay!]
I would love for this guy to apply for a life insurance and document the process.
Think of the GOP and a hot pissed off robot.
So that’s how skynet happened?
Why not use galinstan (eutectic gallium-indium-tin alloy, liquid at room temperature)? I love the stuff, it is completely harmless and the MSDS basically says “DANGER-DANGER-HANDLE WITH CARE-MAY CAUSE GRAY STAINS ON SKIN”. Rub a drop on any piece of glass to turn it into an excellent back-surface mirror. Bit expensive for generous squirting, though.
With what he is making on his videos, I doubt the price is a barrier. I think he spent about $800 Filling up his pool with those orbeez/polymer plant balls
what does the msds say about breathing it? D:
Mercury would be so much cooler
I see…
…what he did there?
Pretty sweet tesla coil at the end of the video.
He shows it off a bit better in this video, https://youtu.be/HXRIQ4Np1mY?t=4m20s
If only he – and many others – would stop abusing and degrading the word “science” and it’s derivations.
Nothing he does is scientific. I haven’t seen all his Videos but so far I’ve not seen him applying the scientific method ever!
He should call his channel TheBackyard…
-(Crazy)StuffDoer
-NonScientist
-WouldBeScientist
-PseudoScientist
-FunScientiXt
-Experimenter (maybe)
Yes, I am trolling/flaming but all those unscientific “scientist” kinda bug me, even if some clips are interesting and / or funny.
You do have a point.
Yes, but is it art though?
just because you haven’t seen it doesn’t mean it is non-existent, hell even if he doesn’t write it down he can, in principle be using the scientific method, he does do stuff to see if it works as he thinks it will, documenting the result on video.
sure it isn’t high order science, hell most if not all of it is already known, but in the past a lot of what science was was exactly this, people goofing around to find out what would happen, it is a time honoured tradition even if it isn’t formal science.
No there is science and there is tinkering and ‘inventing’, but those are not the same although one can derive science from tinkering and inventing of course, but that means studying the details and determining the behavior with some precision and determining the formulas that apply.