Turning Water into Rock with Hydraulic Press

I decide to go all in with the mad scientist approach :D If you have any ideas to improve the setup please let me know for future videos! I a have also the fine publication "[22] Methods for the Study of Water in Ice Phases " By W. F. KUHS that I am going to utilize on planning future videos on this series!

Unfortunately during high transient compression you are heating the water too. You need to increase pressure, then hold it to make sure the water sample cools back down to room temperature.

If the roller bearing piston was hollow on the lower end instead of solid, the water pressure inside the hollow would push the piston metal outwards, thus creating a tighter seal. At present, your design has this pressurized water expanding only the borehole in the large block of metal, which then loosens and destroys the good seal you are seeking. As the inside diameter of the hollow piston is made larger, the sealing pressure will increase, but you can't make the wall too thin because you need those walls to resist the sideways forces of the not perfectly rigid frame of the hydraulic press. (A tapered hollow can give you the best of both worlds.) You actually need at least part of the piston metal to deform more easily than the cylinder metal. You could try putting a much softer metal, such as lead or copper, as the hollow lower end of the hard metal piston. Being softer, that metal will deform more easily, making a tight seal that still has reasonably low friction... Much like a bullet in a high-powered rifle. But notice that bullets are NOT made with a significant hollow on the bottom, because they could seal too tightly and make the gun explode. Related issue: A downside of this hollow bottom approach is, it becomes difficult to determine how much of your compressive force is being consumed by piston friction. A possible solution to that is to have a small tapered plug of some metal that will remain solid until you have exceeded your target pressure, and then exceed the plug's yield strength and be extruded. By knowing the yield strength of the plug metal, you can calculate how much hydraulic pressure is needed to make it extrude. And Yes, definitely DO polish the mating surfaces, at least of the hard metals. @HydraulicPressChannel

Fun fact: water has more known phases than any other pure material. The weird properties of water are in part due to its hydrogen bond having a polarizable dipole, and the C2v point group symmetry of the molecule. Good video.

Leaving an air pocket may be self defeating as air temperature increases dramatically as it’s compressed… Your experiments in physics are entertaining as hell.

Press a deformable plug ahead of the steel rod, so that the deformable plug becomes a wiper seal as it is compressed between the water and the steel rod.

I think you should back-drill the failed tools, press the plug out and look exactly what happened. I'm super curious to find out! Did it cut little channels? Did the roller crack? Did something else happen? So many questions! The answers might be valuable info for your next try, too.

I think they start with normal ice as the higher stage ice 6 and 7 is basically removing the space from the ice molecules and forcing them back in to waters state while keeping it solid. It behaves less like rock or ice or water and more like metal

One of the phrases I've regretted: "I'm just going to push it in anyway"

Honestly the science test are my favorite types of your videos. I enjoy smashing things but I feel like learning from the physics is far more fascinating. 👍

Every week, Lauri gets closer and closer to actually generating a miniature black hole in the shop. Like I genuinely see that happening in the next few years.

Your ability to speak English so fluently, with such an epic accent makes me so happy.

This is killer. I want you to do a collaboration with NileRed where you create some insane shit through high pressure.

Now your next step is simulating nuclear explosion with flash powder, it has same temperature as nuclear fireball after 1 second :D

Dude. I have gotten after YouTubers for "phoning it in" and getting lazy as they get bigger. It's not a condemnation, but more of a warning that if you get lazy, you'll lose people. You have stepped this to a level that is the opposite of that, you got huge, and said, "I'm not done, not resting", and while everyone doesn't have to do this, it should be seriously celebrated and praised. Awesome stuff man, you've re-hooked me.

Try a 3 or 4mm thick copper disc which fits tightly in the upper wider part of the bore on top of the water, and then place the steel roller on top of this, the copper should make a tight seal. Im not sure if the copper will finally squirt out at this pressure, but it should enable a higher pressure build up.

Here on the Canadian Prairies temperatures during winter can be as low as -40 Celsius, presumably similar to Finland. The city that I live in has complained that when the ice is thick and compressed on roads it's hard enough to damage the blades of the plows and graders. Somewhat related is that the steel on cars involved in fender-benders tends to shatter rather than bend at those temperatures.

"So nobody's going to die today, that's always good goal" 🤣

Thanks for taking time to do those experiments. Very interesting. Should you carefully cut the test pieces open and see if anything is below the bearing?

I read a book on super high pressures years ago where they used gaskets made out of soapstone (probably contained within steel) when doing the first experiments to make synthetic diamonds. I wonder if that could work here?