Ben Krasnow puts a 1970s sodium-water reactor patent to the test
The first Applied Science video since mid-July has nearly caught the channel's summer microscope films in three days.
Applied ScienceStory of Why this story? The whole channel is running at 239,884 views a day, 26 times a normal day (9,424).
Which video woke up Applied Science? The newest one, and it did not take long. Ben Krasnow posted "Drawing electricity from this sodium-water reactor prevents it from exploding (in theory)" on September 30, and three days later it is close to a quarter of a million views. The channel as a whole is drawing about twenty-five times its usual daily audience.
The premise is the kind of find his viewers come for. Sodium dropped into water is a classic classroom demonstration: the metal fizzes, skids across the surface and can end in a bang. According to the description, a patent from the 1970s describes a reactor that combines the two to produce substantial electrical power. The title adds the twist: pulling current out of the reaction is supposed to keep it from exploding. That parenthesis, "(in theory)", and the description's blunt question, does it really work, are the whole hook.
It is also his first new upload since mid-July, after a summer spent at the microscope. In one film he used a femtosecond laser, like a lightsaber in his own description, to cut insects open and look inside their heads with an electron microscope. In another, an atomic force microscope recorded high-speed video and helped him etch stainless steel. Before that came a rotor spun by sound alone at 130 decibels, tested in helium, hydrogen and sulfur hexafluoride.
Those two microscope films have been online for about three months. The sodium reactor is already almost level with them.
Published on Trari
Read next
Is this your channel?
Share the story with your audience: in a community post, in your channel's description or on your socials. The text and the badge are ready.
You may use the picture, the badge, and link it to this story.
- Channel
- Applied Science
- Subscribers
- 890,000 ▲ 1,000 this week
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 292,000
- Channel views, pace per day
- 239,884 (on a normal day: 9,424)
The numbers
One new video, three days old, and a channel that usually moves at a steady, modest pace is suddenly running far ahead of it.
💡 Test your knowledge
Which German physicist shared the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work designing the first electron microscope?
Ernst Ruska built the first electron microscope with Max Knoll in the early 1930s and received half of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics for it.
