New video!

can you just make a vid of a high school chemistry class volcano, I think it would be good

I was hoping you'd put it in a mass spec (or whatever is the right tool) before tasting it, but you are brave! Is pure sugar brown in color?

Don Cober

Very satisfying. Now do vanilla from sawdust and start a cookie series.

Quatch

How about LN2 for powderizing cottonballs for the enzyme?

Kevin Martin

Maybe it would be possible to hack the cotton candy machine to change its temperature setting to suit the lower melting point of the glucose. But you would always have the problem that the glucose melting point is closer to room temperature than the sucrose melting point. The cotton candy is in a glassy rather than crystalline phase and it isn't clear how stable that is, especially when the humidity of the room is a factor.

Kevin Martin

There was probably some of the concentrated-sulphuric-acid-on-sugar-makes-foamy-charcoal reaction taking place there. You could see little black bits as the cotton was dissolving.

Stephen Gillie

Cupcakes? What about muffins? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tcR19y7GPM

Paul Grodt

#11 on trending, that's fantastic! I must admit, you fooled me on the article about cotton balls breaking the Internet. I actually tried to look it up. I was reading that it is possible to convert glucose into fructose using simple magnesium oxide as a catalyst. A dehydration reaction of the glucose and fructose could then create sucrose, and I believe you can either then capture this with seed-crystals of sucrose suspended in ethyl alcohol, or just dehydrate it on a surface with nucleation points, such as the process for making rock candy. The sucrose would then work much better for making cotton candy than trying with pure glucose or with mystery glucose caramel.

Patrick Siu

Nice! The sweetest thing of a project is obviously the process itself, and the ability to make SOMETHING out, even if it's not as much as those mass-produced stuff.

Daniel Blake Shoemaker

Do u buy a lot of stuff from Prolab scientific? I got my two good hotplates with chemicals like 98 percent sulfuric acid from prolab. You're from Montreal right Red Nile?

Posh

I think the texture issue may potentially come from the form of the sugar as you put it in the machine. Gotta think about how fine table sugar is (same goes for cotton candy machine specific sugar). Melts at a much quicker rate and probably is what helps produce a lighter cloud! But a great video and extremely fun experiment, definitely worth the wait!

Neuroskynet

Whatever works - I’m all for it. They can label industrial chemicals as “cupcakes” as far as I’m concerned. I’m so anti-customs, I’m just done with them.

Stephen Gillie

He's done those before, but I'll bet he was borrowing his dad's work equipment. His channel and workspace are big enough that he could probably find some cheap way to do these analyses.

Stephen Gillie

Shippers in China are basically playing an algorithmic game to get products past other nations' customs. And being the world's largest manufacturer and shipper means people from that nation get much, much more experience with foreign customs than the rest of us.

A main channel video, yay! I also love the shorts. An idea for shorts might be to do some outside your lab, where anyone could do them anywhere with chemicals that anyone can get (hopefully legally)

Marta

The cotton ball encyclopedia :) Sugar chunks were a bit too big for the machine, you should have pulverize them, but it turned out great anyway. Nothing makes my day like a smile on a chemist's face. I love when you make your crazy ideas come true. Cool project. Waiting for the hot sauce!

Would be interested in a thorough analysis of the result. I know it's not the scope of your channel, but maybe someone can step in and do a GC-MS or such...

Thank you very much for a great bit of work

My name is deez.

From the states here. Agreed that customs sucks, like hard. On an unrelated point: I have to respectfully disagree with the reference to alchemy. While I'm certain the comment was made in jest (which was hilarious and awesome). I would just like to say the reason I enjoy the videos so much is, in a way, they are the inverse of alchemy. Alchemy was historically fake, used as trickery. Very little information was given. And any "information" that was given was dishonest to the end of distraction. So to be clear, my 'disagreement' with the comment is meant exclusively as a complement to the creator. And, I can't stress this enough, not as an insult to the commenter. Cheers y'all!

Neuroskynet

Canadian customs sucks - sometimes you have to call and make sure they release it. Also, Chinese companies intentionally label things as other items because customs sucks.

André Forcier

Great work! Canada Custom must just love you! By now they must have you on speed dial! 🤣😂🤪😉👍✌️

Michael Aichlmayr

Excellent!

Stephen Gillie

27:32 why are you holding a demon?

This is the kind of stuff that I would gladly throw my money at!

I think the cotton candy had a face

Stephen Gillie

Next you'll be turning your walls into rock candy. Or maybe distill the water out of the gypsum and drink it. Love your videos, great to see you've returned!

Adam Rak

you probably have lost some sugar to the initial cellulose breaking. It looked like that the sulfuric acid was also burning the sugar a little.

Paul Fisher

Nigel you should’ve ground the sugar into a powder to work most efficiently as most cotton candy machines use sugar that is the consistency of icing sugar

Shelby Gash-slushby

Ah I'm so excited!!! Thank you!!! ❤

Kris Pockell

I know basically nothing about chemistry, but love these and Explosions&Fire's videos. It's like watching magic happen.

Arra Biata

i like your cut g

Nice, i will watch this tomorrow Because it’s already night for me

It's actual alchemy at this point

Welcome back! Looking forward to it. Project idea, produce YInMn blue pigment. I am a color scientist I'd be happy to make color measurements for you if you send samples to my lab! (will probably produce paint or crayons with the sample, or if you want to make crayons, i.e. probably couldn't return the sample in a substantive way)

lettadaloki

🥰 Thanks Nigel.