> exp-tools > sprengel-mercury-vacuum-pump

Sprengel Vacuum Pump: The most efficient pump ever?

Cody'sLab - 2017-02-04

In this video I build and use a vacuum pump powered by falling mercury.  
more about the pump: https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/classic-kit-sprengel-pump/1014874.article
Applied Science video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7NEI_C9Yh0
more 18th century technology using liquid mercury: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ms7x9bSlbcU
Help me make videos by donating here: https://www.patreon.com/CodysLab

Bradley Wang Yang - 2017-02-06

The entire premise of this channel is Cody saying " ehh, it should be okay"

Charmle H - 2018-09-23

Proof of concept doesn't have to be perfect, good enough does work even though this isn't horseshoes, hand grenades, or nuclear warfare...

deven ritchie - 2018-12-16

most of his videos are on this premise, it's called the scientific method

Robin Lundqvist - 2019-06-26

Bradley Wang Yang dude this is only getting more true. mad lad has started tasting MERCURY now.

Tyler Hargrove - 2019-07-23

Thats why its the best. He made a cannon from urine. I dont think anyone can beat that...

James - 2019-08-05

@Had To He should be ok to drink it while taking a mercury shower

Dr. Stein - 2018-10-09

“I don’t think one of these has been made since color photography was invented.”
You now have my full, undivided attention sir.

Sam Cox - 2019-07-15

Dr. Stein my thoughts

Scott Manley - 2017-03-06

I really enjoyed watching the glasswork, I had some glassblowing lessons a couple of years ago and you make it look so much easier. Also you didn't burn your fingers or injure yourself on glass shards. Great job.

Tyler Hargrove - 2019-07-23

I love how small the youtube community [of nerds!] is. Hey Scott!

Tyler Hargrove - 2019-07-23

@Wyatt Roncin scott makes an episode explaining that the amount of mercury would literally be the planet mercury and we would poison the entire earth and destabilize its orbit in the process of a single launch, but the kerbal inside would survive, smiling.

Ryan Schroer - 2019-07-27

Don't burn your fingers: Fry safe

D Williams - 2019-10-15

Strangely I have a 1/2 unit college credit in glass blowing and I used that skill when I was a student employee of the physics department. I built equipment used in the study of luminous shock waves for a NRL contract,

Háiangku海翁龜。Tâibûn台文 - 2019-11-09

:)

Filipe N. - 2019-04-03

Codys getting shocked by a non eletric pump reminds me Homer Simpson making a salad and it caches fire.

N Martindale - 2019-10-14

@James maize is only really known as corn in the US, corn to us is a generic term for wheat, barley, etc.

James - 2019-10-14

@N Martindale Thanks for filling me in on that, I had no idea it was a cultural difference

TheRandomKing - 2019-12-14

Static electricity isn't strange, but a salad catching fire is. His time machine toaster is a better reference

Anothr To - 2019-12-21

Not as great as the taking robot
Who saves his friend the Pie that got a game made

Jackie Tearie - 2020-02-14

@TheRandomKing Spontaneous combustion happens man. You never know.

markog1999 - 2017-03-21

"Today we cool some mercury to 0K and open a wormhole to a parralell universe"
Later...
"I'm putting my finger in it"

IfYouDisagreeYouAreWrong - 2019-08-02

"parralell"

SilenTree 12th - 2019-08-06

@IfYouDisagreeYouAreWrong somewhere, there's a parallel universe in which parralell is the correct spelling

Meboy1000 - 2019-10-13

@SilenTree 12th he wasn't correcting the spelling, he was quoting it,

Himanshu Sharma - 2017-02-04

Getting shocked from Non Electrical Vacuum Pump
Good Old Cody :D

some stranger - 2017-07-19

but couldet you harnes the electricity ?????

Carlos Arrache Gaming - 2017-08-01

some stranger yeah with a tesla coil and 2 super conducting wires in from the 2 pools to the top of the tesla coil sence the static energy would turn to AC and power your house.
Im a genius let me go make that thing now.

Broockle - 2017-08-03

You could use the electrical potential to run the device. Or at least a portion of it.
Efficiency FTW xD

Mark Firland - 2017-08-14

well the man does seem to have fallen into the habit of doing the improbable lol

Anonymous One - 2017-08-16

connect it to a light bulb to spin the radiometer

Ethan Lammers - 2019-08-30

"I gotta little diamond here to cut the tubing"
pulls out spare pocket diamond

George Reynolds - 2019-08-31

Not unusual, before tungsten carbide most glass cutters used a tiny diamond on non-gem quality.

Jackie Tearie - 2020-02-14

@George Reynolds Kinda proof that diamond wasn't that rare.

George Reynolds - 2020-02-14

@Jackie Tearie Doesn't prove that at all! What else can they do with the tiny stones that are not fit for jewellery, about 2/3 of the total?

Dumdumshum - 2018-01-09

Tfw Cody almost killed himself in a way no one would've guessed.

Tangent - 2019-04-03

@paytyler I have not heard the butter story, please tell me which video I need to watch!

Keith Reynolds - 2019-04-13

Also, Codi makes iodine from table salt and uses chunk of glass in the process to help make it. The same piece of glass that he cut his foot on and uses his newly made iodine to sterilize the cut.

Richard Smith - 2019-07-25

So after all the poison, heavy metals, radioactive materials, and acid cody has messed with, it was butter that almost killed him.

Cori Arview - 2019-08-17

@Tangent It's listed as the butter incident.

holdmybeer - 2019-09-16

@Richard Smith
it butter not happen again :D

Riki - 2019-03-22

In this episode Cody makes a mercury powered vacuum pump inside a chicken coop.

catfish552 - 2019-04-13

Bwaaak!

CP trikester - 2019-05-27

And it's electrifying

NightHawkInLight - 2017-03-18

I missed seeing this one somehow when it was posted, this might be my favorite project of yours recently. Can the drip tube be made a larger diameter so you can pull vacuum faster for your larger chamber?

Aiden Harris - 2019-03-12

Is this old Tony your dad?

John Cochran - 2019-07-18

I know this is a few years later, but I'd say "no".
Reason is because the bubble of air is less dense than the mercury pushing it down and if the tube has too large of a diameter, that bubble of air would overcome the surface tension of the mercury and escape through the slug of mercury above it. However, there's nothing that prevents you from having multiple Sprengel Pumps attached to the same chamber running in parallel to pull the vacuum faster.

lollibone - 2019-08-16

I'm even later and I think John is right. You can probably increase the diameter slightly but I doubt by much. There are however other adjustments that can be made to better the efficiency, like Cody said, the kink he had in his tube was an issue.

GerinoMorn - 2019-08-25

A fork somewhere possibly could work? so that it runs from one mercury supply, has one vaccum-creating inlet, and finally one spout, but in between there would be 2, 5, 100(???) capilaries? I wonder what, if any, the limit is. With some kind of powered mercury pump (I'm thinking low-power, slow-geared Archimedean screw), this possibly could be made into a pretty fast, super-efficient and extremely potent portable device?

I would love for someone to tell me whether this could work!

Michael Pirrone - 2019-09-16

Yes absolutely, Sprengel's device worked in less than a half hour on a half liter of volume. it just depends on how intricate you wish to get with your glasswork.. For instance you could go as far as making multiple stages to pull down the vacuum as the Mercury falls, collect a bit of it and let it continue thru another trap before catching it. Sprengel himself did not actually create the device, he connected to the intake of a water powewered pumping device called a trompe, the precursor to an aspirator pump that had been around since the 16th century. The trompe had several stages so it's likely my guess Sprengel's apparatus did to when he filled it with Mercury instead of water.

Glasiator - 2019-07-22

As a glassblower, I cringed really hard in the beginning.
That being said, I was very impressed with what you managed to put together and that the cold seals on the welds actually held up in a vacuum!


MISSION PASSED - RESPECT +

James Eden - 2019-11-01

You be amazed at what people get away with when they don’t know better.. ive made sci glass for around 15 years now but started with similar basics in my basement lol

SliP _ - 2018-01-10

World's most complicated crack pipe

Hendrik - 2018-01-22

Sprengel Pump!!!! Hermann Sprengel was born in schillerslage near my home city hanover, germany. Nice!
Btw. The sprengel art museum in hannover has nothing to do with him ;) some useless knowledge for you :D

JEIL - 2019-07-20

ich bin ein Hamburger.

levi levis - 2019-10-05

The density of liquid metal still amazes me. "We're going to put a POUND of mercury in here" Adds a tablespoon of it

Stephanus Potgieter - 2019-07-24

Anybody about anything: This has not been done in centuries and we have no records to work from.
Cody: I think I can figure it out....

ibycus314 - 2017-03-11

Would be really cool (and Cody-ish) to make your own light bulb.

cubfan135 - 2018-10-13

This was a great video. Really cool to see some historical machines on this channel. Hope to see more like this in the future.

NoNameM9 cant put the quote marks rip - 2019-07-28

oh hey its that capitalist guy on hermitcraft

Raging Canadian - 2019-07-28

cubfan135 why are you here?

Thrice Ice - 2019-08-05

Whaaaa what a crossover

Demetrius Thompson - 2019-08-30

Cody joining hermitcraft 7 confirmed

Janil Garcia Jr. - 2017-12-27

~Looks up pump on wikipedia~
"Got some idea how it works"
~Builds pump~

Say what you will, but that is bad ass.

inanecathode - 2017-02-09

"For those of you worried about mercury vapor; It's OK because i have that window open." -Cody

Prashant Fauzadar - 2019-07-23

Its the neighbours who need to worry, 😀

David Aston - 2019-11-23

And the Chickens, don't buy Eggs from this Fella....

col0000 smith - 2018-07-18

99% sciency questions
1% me (WHAT ARE THE WHAAAAAAA SOUNDS IN THE BACKROUND

Stormy Effects - 2019-07-13

Bird?

psilocybe cubensis - 2019-07-20

Quails

Jason - 2019-07-28

Nancy Pelosi

Jeff Behn - 2019-09-02

The Martians he's going to populate his Chicken Hole Mars Experiment with (duh)

David Aston - 2019-11-23

Chickens slowly dying from the effect s of Mercury Vapour?

Brad Hollinger - 2018-09-16

He said “safety squints!’
Love to see “best, smartest, most straightforward, and smartest, and self-effacing tube-sters find and appreciate each other.

Michel Feldheim - 2019-03-26

Did you stick your fingers in to test the potential? Why would you do that

captainTubes - 2019-04-08

For SCIENCE!!

TimesThree - 2019-06-06

He's Cody why not?

Connor White - 2019-11-24

Dr. Stone brought me here lol

Andrew Detchkoff - 2019-06-07

I could definitely tell it was 8 o'clock

dereklacy - 2019-08-23

You should have stuck a volt meter in it to see how much voltage it had!

Ben Ng - 2019-09-30

19th century scientists discovers a property of fluid

everyone:
What if we used mercury as the fluid

Androkon - 2019-08-05

The way you casually handle mercury makes me really anxious .-.

steve green - 2019-05-30

This would work more like you wanted if the radiometer was the other way up,
so the remaining air/vapour in the chamber flows out under gravity.
I used to work for a company making mercury barometers, and worked with diffusion pumps, and this is part of how they work.

ameunier41 - 2019-07-15

So he probably have a perfect vaccum at the top?

Vincent Robinette - 2019-07-23

That could create a slug of mercury in the line, preventing a good evacuation of the radiometer bulb. To get rid of that mercury, leaving the lamp on it, to heat the mercury in the radiometer hotter than the mercury in the Sprengel pump would eventually evaporate the mercury, and it would condense in the pump. He really DID do it the right way, though he could have solved the problem by putting a trap in it, so mercury couldn't back feed into the radiometer. Live and learn, that's why this is called an "experiment".

Aaron Tuplin - 2019-07-24

I wish he had hooked a multimeter up to those two pools of mercury now

Cracked Emerald - 2019-10-22

It discharged, also, i don't think that any common multimeter measures kilovolts

Senih Okuyucu - 2019-03-27

To anyone doing anything, never stick your finger in Mercury, period.

aomanchutube - 2019-08-05

This could be automated with an electrohydrodynamic pump to get the Mercury back up the tube.

Kanyon - 2017-02-04

Alternate title: "man sticks fingers into mercury. the results are shocking!"

ThetaReactor - 2018-09-13

Tyson C  I'd guess it's similar in principle to a Kelvin water-dropper.

NessHX - 2018-09-30

I'd suggest grounding both pools

Dylan Evans - 2018-10-03

"It Should Work"

click here i dare you - 2018-10-12

Kanyon dat cat is so cute

Jonathan Hilliard - 2018-10-22

I got the 666th like on this comment >:)

Mojken - 2019-09-27

I love how you can use this pump to both evacuate and run a lightbulb, just by moving some mercury around.

Rethink Science - 2019-07-25

I be have used this mercury pump to extract various gases from transformer oil and to send it through a gas chromatogram, testing for hydrogen.
We used 2x three way gas valves to make it work better. And glass syringe fro the collected sample

Kieron Seymour-Howell - 2017-11-09

Cody'sLab , It would be interesting to put a florescent light tube between the
reservoirs and see if it remains lit, or how much useful work can be
taken from the electrical potential.

Vincent Robinette - 2019-07-23

If he did that, it would not light continuously, but rather, it would flash repeatedly. It takes a lot of voltage for a fluorescent tube to strike, but the holding voltage is much lower. Since this doesn't generate any appreciable current, it will drop out, until the voltage builds back up enough to strike again. Something like a relaxation oscillator. Don't get me wrong, it WOULD be interesting!

Ali Syed - 2019-03-26

"Safety squints" ➡️ 😆

Randall Stephens - 2017-02-06

"I made the vacuum"

I'm amused by the concept of "making" the absence of stuff.

Andrew Lorona - 2019-01-05

@Simon WoodburyForget I evacuated the available space until what was left was almost nothing. Assuming you can create almost nothing...which seems accurate. Technically.

Dotan Cohen - 2019-03-26

I see that you've never given your credit card to a teenager.

mark Schippel - 2019-03-30

I believe the correct phrase is pulling a vacuum. Which I think he says a couple of times.

dukewilliam1st - 2019-03-31

there is a difference between making the absence of stuff and the absence of making stuff.

Patrick McLeod - 2019-05-21

How do you explain the big bang "making space"?

Keith Reynolds - 2019-03-18

19:39 "shock of my life" use that to make a lord kelvin thunderstorm with mercury.

Bruno Bronosky - 2017-03-22

15:41 "That's why I'm wearing some safety squints"
/me thinks "he watches AvE"
15:43 "to quote AvE"
/me "whoa!"

Golddarkdog - 2019-07-26

I'm glad Cody got to combine two of his favorite things, vacuums and mercury. Such a happy Cody :D

Nick Burpee - 2018-12-14

I think between you and Nilered, you'll be the first to blow yourself up or poison yourself. Anyway. Don't die! Good vid.

Chris Goat - 2019-05-23

Hello Cody, I've seen etchings of this mercury pump before, but I've never seen one actually working.I like your enthusiasm. Thank you. Chris

Leon Tran - 2018-11-10

Cody: As you can see, the mercury is...
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Nazimelon - 2019-09-15

"Turbomolecular Pump"

Excuse me

Jungle Jargon - 2019-07-20

And people thought of that over 300 years ago.

TheFlacker99 (Flak) - 2017-02-06

Please measure the voltage between the two reservoirs!

Ong Bonga - 2018-12-19

@Jean-Luc Picard You could probably adapt the system to increase the potential. I have no idea what's going on there, but I would guess friction plays a role. The final bit of tubing could be made from a different material, or have a different geometry, to increase friction, without compromising the efficiency of the vacuum itself.

3DR - 2019-01-12

@Ong Bonga Basically gravity gets turned into negative pressure on the vacuum side and positive pressure on the exit site. In very small amounts. Due to Mercury being a metal, it can quite easily move electrons around in itself and they can be picked up by the tubing material, creating a difference in potential.

David - 2019-04-06

Less efficient, you're wasting some of that 700 j of energy on making the potential rather than removing air.

Harvie - 2019-04-15

Basicaly if we put enough mercury to our rivers, we can make hydroelectric powerplants much more effective.

Matchaiko - 2019-06-07

David yet a cool way of turning your body energy into usable voltage

IrishWristWatch94 - 2018-12-05

15:35 "ENGAGE YOUR SAFTEY SQUINTS!!"
-AvE

Trolley Simson - 2019-07-20

Cody laughing: H H H H H H H H

Dusten Varcados - 2019-03-21

Wow I'd love to see this under a polariscope when he's done. I can't imagine this apparatus will survive for to long under strong vacuum repetitively.

1FatHappyBirthday - 2019-07-24

Never mind the mercury vapors. Although you can hear it in the background, I didn't tell you guys I have my parrot with me and he will keel over first as a warning to me to get out.