I Waterproofed Myself With Aerogel!

I feel confident. You You're confident that I am not going to be damaged. Not permanently. Okay.

Let me back up for a moment. I want to talk about the properties of Aerogel, the world's lightest solid. What I'm going to do is I'm going to lean in. So, it's coming in through this mic.

And then, can you do that again? Yeah. This is what it sounds like. That is weird.

It has a metallic ring. First recognized by Aerajel's inventor, Samuel Kistler, all the way back in 1931. Now, Aerajel is an excellent thermal insulator, but it's not the easiest material to work with. Can I try it?

Sure. Oh, I didn't I don't quite have the the touch. Why can't I make it ring? Oh, no.

And look, it didn't take a whole lot to break it, right? It breaks pretty easily. So, is there a way to take the extraordinary thermal insulation of Aerajel, but make it more usable? Uh, what I put together here is just a combination of aerel particles, silica aerogel particles, and a nonflammable binder.

Uh, and you should be able to put it on your your skin and hit yourself with a torch. Should Right. We'll give it a shot. So, here, just take a little bit and squeeze around your finger.

Just around? Yeah, just squeeze it around your finger. One finger or two fingers. Doesn't matter.

How's that? Am I Am I doing it wrong? Oh, yeah. That's That's Yeah, that'll be good.

You just want to make sure that the fire when it goes around your finger doesn't uh hit the bare skin. It seems like it's pretty thin around this fingertip here. Like, how thick should it be? You're making You're making me nervous holding a blowtorrch.

Can I do the the the the blowtorrching? Oh, you can do the blowtorrching. Absolutely. Cuz I mean, if this is if this goes wrong.

So, how hot is a blowtorrch flame? Well, it's really hard to tell with the thermal camera, but from our experience, it's usually, you know, at least 1500° C, and it can get as hot as 2,000. So, yeah, this is very hot. All right, let's try it.

This is so wrong. Should be very hot there. I, you know, it looks like I'm toasting a marshmallow. Wa.

Why is it uh flaming like that? ...