TIG temperature can easily reach 3000C (close enough to 3000K) [1], more than the boiling point of beryllium. The temperature of the metal slug would rise until it reaches thermal equilibrium through heat loss, the energy loss likely being due to the vapourisation of the element with the lowest boiling point: beryllium.
That smoke was probably beryllium vapour.
I'm no expert, but I would assume the beryllium vapour would not have made it out of the apparatus. By luck, it would have condensed either before reaching the HEPA filter or on its way through the HEPA filter, even though the HEPA filter was not designed to stop a vapour. Nile Red also had the sense to use a fume cupboard. Despite this, the inside of the apparatus could well have been coated with friable condensed beryllium, which would probably not have been flushed by the argon. If doing this, I'd take additional precautions against condensing beryllium vapour containing the equipment (I don't know what they might be).
Maybe it's a case of controlling arc temperature to keep it below the boiling point of beryllium? Maybe a small amount of impurity with a lower boiling point can be added to the mix, so it boils off first and avoids the beryllium boiling? This might also prevent loss of beryllium from altering the composition of the glass?
How would the pros handle this risk?
I gather there are similar issues with the refining of silicon, in which silicon vapour can cause silicosis.
Element Melt Boil
Beryllium 1560K 2742K
Copper 1357K 2835K
Nickel 1728K 3003K
Titanium 1491K 3560K
Zirconium 2125K 4650K
I think the simplest solution would be to lower the voltage, aim the arc at the Beryllium, and ensure it and the copper, nickel, and titanium melt together before ramping up the voltage to integrate the Zirconium.
I’m no chemist, but it’s possible that all these metals together form a eutectic system, meaning you can’t distill the beryllium alone.
I recall too a pair of angled plinths and the steel balls would appear from an opening in the display, drop and bounce from one plinth to the other before exiting (repeat).
No amount of googling has helped shed any light as to "What that was". Perhaps this metallic glass.
(Also recall a computer that you could play Tic-Tac-Toe against. The input was a more or less a telephone keypad, the display large neon X's and O's. Seven year old me, or thereabouts, was fascinated to read that the computer had never yet lost.)
His literature research skills are still pretty mediocre. In this video I would have liked some info what influences the bounciness of the amorphous metal. Maybe there's an even bouncier one, that doesn't even need beryllium. He just copied the one he got from Steve Mould.
Of course doing somewhat dangerous stuff (and then exaggerating the danger) is kind of the theme of his channel and works very well on youtube. He surely is very talented at playing the youtube game and has a very pleasant voice.
But really, if you're amazed by his technical competence you've never worked with a truly competent chemist.
Like how many people do you reckon work with "a truly competent chemist" in their life? A knee-jerk Google search quoted me approx. 100 000 people working as a chemist in the States, compared to approx. 135 040 000 people working a full time job in general. That's 0.07% of the workforce being chemists. Of which who knows how many fit your bill of being a "truly great chemist", and then who knows how many people get a chance to work with them. The number of people who should be able to tell how good of a chemist he is is orders of magnitude lower than the views on any one of his videos.
Comments like yours always baffle me.
As someone who aced chem but nearly failed the labs, he seems remarkably skilled to me, so you saying "horrible" and "average" really surprises me -- but obviously I have nothing to judge by, never having been exposed to anything near that level of chem work except for his videos.
As you allude to, I wonder how much of the "it didn't work, so I had to try something different" is for YouTube -- if every project worked the first time it would be boring.
I never got that impression from him. He definitely plays up the Rube Goldberg-ishness of his procedures, but his insistence on the risks involved seems to me to be a safety thing.
It’s important to note that he’s never cavalier about the risks. He isn’t playing up the “mad scientist” angle, or portraying any of the risks as cool. Every mention of the dangers involved is presented more in terms of him feeling uncomfortable with the risk, and is swiftly followed with what he did for safety.
Given how much he keeps bringing up that he’s buying all his reagents from Amazon and eBay, there’s a real risk that somebody might decide to try and replicate his videos at home. Ultimately, the stuff he’s doing isn’t super risky for a trained chemist, but it is pretty damn dangerous for the random teenager watching his videos, so you need to make sure they respect the stuff that’s going on.
(The other thing I wonder is, does he just keep all that equipment around that gets used like once a year?)
I wonder what else could the forge be used for in future videos?
[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20240901022927/https://www.nytim...
This piece of equipment still seems like a better investment than the ~4.5oz of gold he bought to make golden grills, which would be about 11k at todays rates.
I'd actually find it cool if he did a shorter video revisiting the purple gold with his additional experience and the new forge to see if he could manage to do it easily at this point.
What happens if you just use glass for the bouncing surface? I was reading about the materials and I am not sure what property contributes to it's bounciness, but I think it is tensile strength(but it may be surface hardness). and regular glass has a slightly lower tensile strength than these amorphous metallic structures, fused quartz has a higher tensile strength, and I was unable to find out what tempered glass is, but I suspect tempered glass would tend to shatter if a small hard ball was bounced off it. Anyway, I was unable to form a good hypothesis as to what would happen, but I did find that mcmaster-carr sells fused quartz disks if anyone wants to try.
https://www.mcmaster.com/products/glass-discs/ultra-high-tem...
Grand Illusions original video: https://youtu.be/EzFjZJEAt18
Anyway, lots of options to safely experiment with material science concepts in very accessible and tweakable ways! No beryllium or foundry equipment required. I do think the massive, well fitted, rigid surface backing up the disc is important to constrain what this is demonstrating - plastic vs elastic deformation.
A VERY flat surface might greatly increase the bounce.
A surface coating of BAM[2] might also help, by increasing the hardness, and lubricity.
I think there's a lot of room to go in increasing the hang time of the bouncing bearing.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_grinding
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminium_magnesium_boride
I can sympathize with you somewhat though, because the Food Wishes channel drives me insane for a similar reason. (Chef John has mentioned he speaks that way for his videos on purpose)
Best guess on that might be cost.
I'd assume he was trying to do everything close to the atmospheric pressure even if its an intert gas's, because its less variables. And if a leak occurs you don't have a large pressure difference to help blow the hazardous elements everywhere.
He cycled the argon five times, which is probably plenty without the need for new equipment. He also melted titanium to ensure that any remaining reactive gases were destroyed even after five cycles of argon.