Hi guys, welcome back to Beals Science. I'm Craig Beals and I want to show you some
science behind some magic.
So I've got three cups set up here and I've got some water.
Now this is regular old water. Pour it into one of the cups and i'm going to move
them around and you, sitting at home, watch
see if you can keep track of the one that has the water inside. You ready?
We'll go ahead and add some water to this. Again, regular water you can see it's going in
camera is not going to cut away. Nothing's going to happen.
I'm going to move them around pay attention
There we go.
Now I am not a magician, obviously! I am a science teacher.
so there was no sleight of hand there
you probably still have a really good idea of where you think the water is and
if I had to venture to guess I would say that you're pointing at
this one. Am I right? Well this should be it
so here's the water
Now wait a minute. Wait a minute! Maybe it was this one
no this one
No!
I told you it's not magic its science.
There's the three cups we just use, right here. Ok now let's see if you can pay
attention
Here we go. You've got to make good observations in science
I've got water promise you it's real water otherwise I wouldn't drink it
going to dump some in, about that much sounds good to me
now keep track the water's in here. Here we go
Is that enough times?
Well I'm just going to go right through them. And hopefully you have an idea you're
picking out which one of these you think the water is in. But i'm just going to go
ahead and dump them all out. You ready?
If you chose this one, your wrong.
If you chose this one you're wrong. If you chose this one...hmmm...
again, this isn't magic this is science so there's something going on that's
tricking you.
Ok so what's going on here? Let's look at this. Before I came up here
I, of course, cheated a little bit I am NOT a magician.
I am a scientist. So in one of them, in one of the cups, I had put this chemical
this chemical is called sodium polyacrylate. Good luck saying that.
Sodium polyacrylate. Now sodium polyacrylate is a polymer. I put some in
one of those and then I took really regular old water dumped it in the one
that had sodium polyacrylate. Now look at this
Look at the water. It's in there.
We shuffled it around and there it is
but here's the thing obviously those are in empty
look at this that's sodium polyacrylate that's in the bottom
it's soaked up the water. This is the cup that it was in before it's still in
there
it's just in the bottom. This is the cup that it was in the second time it's
still in there so the sodium polyacrylate soaked it up.
Really what is sodium polyacrylate and what are the uses besides doing
something like this
Well diapers of course.
So diapers obviously soak up the baby's potty
and how do they do that? Well they're filled with sodium polyacrylate so the
polymer soaks up the potty and doesn't let it come back out of the diaper and
really it doesn't require a whole lot of sodium polyacrylate inside the diaper
because it's really a magical polymer. It can hold an exceptional amount of water
because of its configuration and the way it's made. In fact it can hold upwards of
300 times its own mass in water. That's phenomenal and look it just soaks it up
and soaks it up and it doesn't let it come back out because of the hydrogen
bonds that are holding it inside. Now on a microscopic level
what would this look like? The best way to represent it
is with ramen noodles and the reason is if you look at the ramen
it's got this inner woven pattern so just like when we set ramen in water on
the stove top
it starts to soak it up. Not only in the ramen but also in the gaps between it as
well and look how much the ramen has expanded. Its soaked up the water so is
this science or is it magic?
Well it's science of course. So there you go
you've ever wondered how to make water disappear, at least the scientific way
now you know. And if you've ever wondered how diapers work well now you know as well
again, it's not magic, its SCIENCE!
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