The Red-Hot Nickel Ball King

What is it that makes people so fascinated by seeing different objects get destroyed? "It's probably strictly just curiosity, you know, 'what will happen?'" says Matthew Neuland. "That's where you get your satisfaction from, actually seeing it done. And if it does something you weren't expecting, that's pretty cool."

Neuland, who goes by the username Carsandwater on YouTube, is somewhat of an expert when it comes to this particular type of curiosity. As his YouTube channel says: "I play with fire so you don't have to."

Most of his videos have the same format: Neuland torches a ball of nickel until it is red-hot, then drops it onto various objects, or sometimes into liquids.

He's made 69 of these "Red Hot Nickel Ball" videos so far, dropping the ball into or onto everything from Velveeta to thermite to gasoline. The videos usually get several hundred thousand views, but sometimes go into the millions.

With no formal science background, he is simply indulging a classic American pastime: a dad hanging out in his garage, messing with stuff to satisfy an outside interest.

When I spoke to Neuland on the phone, my first question was the obvious one: how and why did you start doing this? "I'd built a water torch," Neuland explains matter-of-factly, in his colloquial Great Lakes accent. (A water torch is a safer cousin of the blowtorch, using only water and electrolysis to produce a flame.) "I was just fooling around, and I had a ball of nickel that I had from a previous job I worked at, and I heated it up and put it in water to see what would happen."

What happened was the Liedenfrost effect, which occurs when a liquid comes into contact with matter that is heated to a significantly greater temperature. The temperature difference in these cases is so great that the liquid forms a protective layer of vapor around the object, protecting itself from boiling too rapidly. The experiment also produced some incredible noises.

This first Red Hot Nickel Ball video (or RHNB, as it is frequently referred to on the channel) is only 27 seconds long, but has racked up over seven million views. The comments run the usual gamut of YouTube stupidity: "This makes me horny for some reason," "That torch is great for heating knives and then smoking a bit of the mary jane :)," plus users trying to assert their science nerd dominance over one another. Whatever their reaction, people were definitely watching.

"It went viral," Neuland says, "and I started getting in requests…I kept doing it, and they kept liking it."

One such request was for Neuland to drop the nickel ball into Gak, that 90s-nostalgia Nickelodeon toy that was really just a ball of slime that made fart noises when you squished it in its container. The Gak makes a different noise when the nickel hits it, almost like a sad, resigned sigh.

I asked Neuland to tell me the most unusual requests he's gotten. "Probably the inappropriate ones," he says with a chuckle, more of disbelief than amusement. "I don't know if I should even say it…not that they're serious about it, but to put it in places on people's bodies, stuff like that."

Neuland says he always wears goggles when he makes his videos, and usually wears a respirator, but he's still susceptible to injury. "I've gotten burned a few times, mostly off-camera," he says.

The worst was in the RHNB vs. Crayons video. As it turns out, molten crayon wax is surprisingly flammable, and Neuland tried to quench the flames by pouring the wax into a bucket of water. "I tried to slowly pour it into the water, but I accidentally dumped it in," he says. Flames shot everywhere, giving Neuland quite a few blisters on his hand and arm. Admirably, he says nothing when this happens, but you see the camera frantically jerk away from the flaming bucket.

Not all of Neuland's videos involve the ball of nickel. Some are experiments with liquid nitrogen, and some are simply him using his water torch to light things up. One early video shows Neuland incinerating a baby tooth from his own childhood. The reaction is fascinating, but I found myself involuntarily clutching my jaw as I watched it.

Often, Neuland is just as surprised by the results as the viewer. One reaction that caught him off-guard was when he dropped the nickel ball into honey. The honey boiled so rapidly that Neuland had to quickly cover the cup of honey with a plastic jug (which was partially melted in the process).

My personal favorite reaction was in the watermelon video—the nickel ball barely makes a dent in the rind, and when Neuland tries again with the watermelon sliced in half, the fruit's high water content cools the ball down before it can do much damage.

What's next for Neuland and his nickel ball? "I have a handful of things that people have sent in, so I need to start getting to those. I have a printer cartridge that somebody sent me, that'll be fun, and also some pistol grips." He also mentions a Nokia phone he's been given, which are internet-famous for their indestructibility.

Regardless of what Neuland does next, his half a million subscribers will be there, satisfying that uniquely human urge to just "see what happens." If you destroy it, they will come.