ExplosionsandFire

Videos r taking time

I’ve been working on the silicon carbide video and I’m still working on it! Been a bit of a drawn-out process, but I’ve been able to get a water chiller to run the cooling on the induction furnace, so I’m really excited to go push it to its limit in the next week or two, chasing a 1800 C temperature that will let us fuse silicon dioxide and carbon into silicon carbide. I hope so!

thanks as always for your support here, I’ve bought a lot of equipment and crucibles and gadgets f...

New Ex&F video!! Yes!

Greetings!! Here is a brand new chemistry energetics video. I make some flash powders which aren’t very good, and it takes me a while. But… it all works out?? Maybe??

Thanks for all your support, not just for letting me buy $500 of BTC in 2020 but for the support that keeps me making these videos even after constant long breaks. Hope you enjoy it!

- Tom

September time!

Hi everyone! Here's an update on what i've been working on!

The next video really should be the next Cubane video where we do photo-reactor stuff...... but it wont be. I've just been stuck doing boring purification on the diketone and not building the photo-reactor and its not interesting! I've been filming this stuff and maybe it'll be edited together eventually but it just feels like a grind and i'm not convinced its good watching. People want to watch me run a photoreactor so that's...

July..August update!

Hello everyone! OpenSauce was great but always makes the month fly by! Can’t believe it is August!

The panel and Gameshow I was on at the festival are viewable through this new Sauce+ video platform for a signup fee- sorry that I can’t publically post it. But the game show especially and the other one’s I’ve seen were a lot of fun!!

Now back to the chemistry— I’m working on making these lead perovskite nanocrystals and I’m pleased to say it’s working well!! Look a...

June! It's cubane time again

Hello everyone!

The goal for the new Big Cubane series was to make 100g of cubane by the OpenSauce festival (July 19-20th). .Oh no...... that's somehow only a month away so it's a very tight deadline!!! But I'll do what I can!! ((Will I be seeing any of you there in San Francisco in July??))

So yes the next video is doing Steps 4 + 5, which is the diels-alder step and then the deprotection. But! We don't have a lot of material (I mean, we have quite a bit but this series is meant...

G’day! It’s somehow May!

Hello!! The video for this month will be the ‘Making a Yellow Pigment’ video, which is a Tantalum doped Yttrium molybdate. The chemistry is coming along… but the final step is a hearing step at 1400 degrees C for several hours… I’ve got a steel melting 5000W induction furnace online and uhhh powering it is an issue- it’s a 16A plug and pulls all those Watts in a way I’m not sure any circuits I have can handle it… hmm.

I’ll sort it out but it’s another reminder that ...

dont send the Plutonium guy to jail (Draft)

Hello!! This is my video about the Plutonium guy. It’s currently a Draft, I have to finish it ASAP but I’m sick of the sound of my own voice!!!!

So if you give this a watch let me know if any arguments seem wrong or don’t make sense… maybe sections that need more graphics?? Or places where the sound quality is bad??? Also let me know if it is good haha.

The final version (this + maybe minor changes?) will go up tomorrow hopefully!

Thanks as always,

Surprise Ex&F video?!

Hello everyone!

So like most people, I’ve been getting a bit mad about this news story out of Sydney about a guy who imported plutonium. It’s all a bit strange and maddening so I thought I’d do something a bit different and make a video about it on Explosions&Fire!

I know it’s odd having an Ex&F video without any chemistry, but I think people will still find it very interesting and I do love a good reason to be mad at the government.

The guy is ...

Next cubane video in a few days

Hello! I think a lot of the fun of an Extractions&Ire video is you genuinely don’t know if the science is going to go very well or very poorly, will I get things right or mess everything up? So some of my favourite videos are when both of those things happen- we immediately win some and lose some.

This is definitely the case for the next cubane video- some real struggles with simple stuff and then somehow we end on a huge win. Spoilers: the picture is 170grams of tribromo-ketal, ...

Feb? March? Chemistry

Hello all! Time flies by doesn’t it always!!

The next video out on extractions&ire is the bromination of the ketal, the latest in the big scale cubane synthesis. As picture, there’s 300 ml of bromine! I’m yet to run the actual reaction— but soon- I’m excited! Video should be out mid March.

Looking forward, the next video after that is a ‘Making Yellow Pigment’ project, and for that we need yet another furnace!! This one was more expensive, but apparently gets up...

Jan video (nearly!)

Hello all,

My quest to post a monthly video remains elusive, but I am getting better I think!

I’m nearly done with the ‘Jan’ video, which is making Er-Yb doped Yttrium oxide. I’ve got an IR laser so tomorrow we will finally see if all my work has paid off and we can see the ‘Upconversion fluorescence’ from it. I’m confident!

I was mostly concerned about the anneal step, which needed 2 hours of 800 degrees C. For this, I bought a metal melting furnace (pictured...

January Chem

Hi all! Back to work tomorrow… I’m sure many of you are feeling this… apologies for reminding you…

But lots of shed chem going on! Here’s the overview of the current projects:

Extractions&Ire:

• Er/Yb doped Y2O3 for demonstrating upconversion fluorescence. Starting from Y, Er and Yb metal, we’ll make the nitrate slats and then do a ‘solution combustion synthesis’ followed by a calcination. I’ve ordered a 980nm laser to demonstrated t...
  2025-01-05 12:25:11 +0000 UTC View Post

Christmas Tar

Hi everyone! Hope you’re getting a break at the end of the year- anyone doing some cool projects? Maybe some chemistry??

The weather here is beautiful, maybe a little hot… but perfect for chemistry I feel- nice long sunny days. Currently I’m trying to do the first 2 cubane steps at the large scale. Things are looking….. a little like tar honestly, so I may have ruined it, but we’ll find out after a vacuum distillation tomorrow!

Hoping this video will be out around the 3...

New series announcement !

Hi everyone! I’m excited to say what the next long series on the channel is! The first intro video should be out this month or early December, with the first actual chemistry video coming out shortly after that.

The series is:

Cubane: The quest for 100g

We are once again making Cubane 1-4 dicarboxylic acid, but no longer satisfied with only a few milligrams, and we are scaling up to try and get at least 100 grams of the final product. While this ...

Patreon payment updates

Hello everyone! Sorry for the long post, but here’s some info about upcoming changes to the Patreon.

In short: your pledge will stay the same amount, but from December, will be charged monthly to support the channel in advance of a video, rather than per video after the video is posted. If you’re happy with this, you don’t have to do anything. If it seems like a lot to you (I mean it is a step up from a new video every 3-4 months!), I really don’t want to rip you off so please ...

FOOF video (not broken!)

Hello again, here is the FOOF/PtF6 video (without any render errors... just had to run the air conditioner at full blast onto the computer for the whole render--- need to fix the thermal paste ASAP maybe I think?)

Anyway, bit of a different video but hope you enjoy it! Next video we will be sure to return to doing shed chemistry, don't worry!

Tom

FOOF video is here!

Hello everyone! The new video is here for you to watch early access now!! 

Just like last video, this is meant to be the final version, but after uploading I see that there are some render errors, probably from my computer overheating again…… re-rendering and uploading is at least a 5 hour process, so I will do that for tomorrow- so maybe save your best comments for the non-broken version. But it’s still the same video so I hope you enjoy it!!!

(I’ll also tweak the Pa...

Next video is complete....

... but not out until next week. The German group I filmed the video with are still reviewing the final version, so I'll wait until I get the final tick of approval from them before I upload. They've seen previous versions and things have been okay so it should be fine.... I'm not nervous at alll..... (I never have to have other people review the work before I upload so okay this is scary for me).

As alwayyss, thanks for your patience, Ex&F video next week! It's 32 minutes l...

Merch ending (for now) + some updates

Hi all, hope you're doing well! I'm going to be turning off the merch at the end of the month... this is mostly because I need to spend time updating it, making new designs, improving the shipping efficiency... a bit of work that I've been avoiding. So there will be more cool things in the future (and patreon will be the first to see them!) but if you have always wanted a shirt but haven't got around to it, now is your moment! You can't get anything after the 31st of August!
You can use th...

Fluorine chemistry

I’ve just finished up a few days in Berlin where I was lucky enough to film some of the most powerful oxidisers ever made. Some really fascinating chemistry and I can’t wait to make this all into the video.

In the first picture you can see liquid oxygen floating on liquid fluorine, which gets exposed to UV light turning it into FOOF - a chemical that has sort of entered pop science as a thing that exists, but this may be the first time ever this reaction has been filmed?? So, again...

Next video - Euro trip

Hi everyone!

The yellow powder video has done well, which is nice! But onto the next video!
I'm going to be trying something different - I'm going to be visiting a University in Europe to film some dangerous chemistry. All the Ex&F videos over the years have been about me personally doing the chemistry, so it will be a bit different, but it is an absolute dream of an opportunity, and one I would never have hope to replicate it on my own in the shed.
No full spoilers yet, but...

Yellow Powder video is out!

Here it is! (again).

Sorry about having to reupload it- oh man I've spent all day trying to get it to re-render without glitching. I think my cpu needs new thermal paste or something... it was an hour long edit and it seemed to really be suffering for the last 15 minutes of the edit. Anyway... hope you enjoy it! And hello to all the new signups!!

Tom, Ex&F

Yellow powder video is here right now!

Hello, here is my new video on yellow powder. Thanks for your patience, and as always thanks for your support in keeping the videos sponsor segment free (because honestly ask yourself, how would I fit in a sponsor segment into this video?? Remove the parts complaining about the NBN? Complaining about the ketamine purity in Aus?? Those are all very important for the explosives science!)

I'll put a charge post when this goes public in 24 hours or so. I used to do this on accident but now...

Im making videos

Hi all, just a quick update on the content:

The next Ex&F video on Yellow Powder is still getting edited together. I’m optimistic that it is only a week or two away!! I’m really happy with it so far, to me it’s the right mix of very interesting science and increasingly odd ‘commitment to the bit’.

Over on Extractions&Ire, my current project is making a fluorescent rare-earth doped Zinc telluride glass. I’ve really enjoyed making exotic glasses previously- and ...

Open Sauce 2023/2024

Hi everyone!
As per usual, this is just an update to say I am indeed working on the next Ex&F video - the 'Yellow Powder' one will hopefully be done before... or at least shortly after Open Sauce 2024, which has me going to San Francisco for the festival on June 14-16.
Say hello if you'll be there! I met a few of you there last year which was super cool. I don't know much detail about the event, its a bit of as mystery still- but this was the case in 2023 and it was fantastic, so ...

More yellow powder tests

Hi all, just a larger scale test of the yellow powder mixture, with some footage at 31000fps. Very excited to see a shockwave in the footage! Wasn't expecting to see it so clearly in broad daylight, but its certainly there.
I read your comments on the previous post about the low-res footage, and people didn't seem to mind the low quality, so I probably wont do any more upscaling, especially on the super low res stuff where the upscaling has very little to work with. This footage is 320x12...

yellow powder tests

Just sharing some early footage of some yellow powder explosions I filmed last week. Small scale stuff, confirming that the mix does explode like I expect it to! Also trying out some more high-speed footage things, this is ramping my camera up to 15968 fps! I'm not sure how useful that footage is though, because it feels hard to convey how many frames it is, and at a 336x240 resolution- it is a bit jarring to watch. It has also been upscaled to a resolution of 672x480 (using TopazAI) which is...

Next Ex&F video - Yellow?

Hello all! I've had a bit of a break from making Ex&F videos recently, and have instead focused on Extraction&Ire videos, which have been a lot of fun. Its been great to wrap up the cubane series and also do some individual one-off inorganic videos- and feedback seems to be that people really like those longer inorganic videos, so I'll definitely keep making them (I'd probably make them even if people hated them, it's nice to have a cool, defined project!).

Anyway, re...

Christmas Chemistry

Hope everyone had a great Christmas this year! Christmas in Australia means holidays with long, sunny days (although it did rain on Christmas this year here which is pretty odd) which are perfect for doing chemistry.

I’ve gifted myself some new element samples and am excited to do some inorganic chemistry.

There’s some colourful rhodium chemistry I will attempt, assuming we can dissolve it into solution okay… pictured is the 1/2 a gram sample I have- ...

Flare video (again)

Ok I fixed the typo and re-uploaded... also didn't tick the box saying "this video contains slightly dangerous activities" or whatever, so now it hasn't got age restricted.... hopefully it stays that way. Will make it public after I sleep (in maybe 8 hours??) because otherwise I'll be stressing all night about it. 

Thank you for being on the Patreon and allowing me to make this kind of content! It's always 'risky' to make fires, talk about bombs etc on Youtube as it can ...