This Video is About Electroadhesion.

In case you don't want to scroll all the way down to our sources in the video description, here's the electroadhesion paper: pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acscentsci.3c01593 And based off the not-yet-published stuff they told us about while we were shooting, we may have to do a follow up video at some point down the road.

Clearly chemists should be required to hire 3-year-olds to continuously ask them "but why?", until they realize that the answer is "nobody knows (yet)."

The jello became blue because copper ions were driven into the jello by running current through it from a copper plate

If i ever need to gule a piece of metal to jello, I'll come back to this video.

This is an astounding example of science communication. Clear, concise, stimulating; seeing you do the experiments, getting sidetracked, asking questions and not immediately having answers makes the journey enjoyable and instructive (THIS is how science works!). thank you for making it

This seems to be a bit of rediscovery. Edison invented an audio amplifier based on electroadhesion he called the 'electro-motograph', after noting that passing an electric current between a wet absorbent substance and a metal plate caused the wet substance to stick. It used adhesion between a rotating metal disk and a chalk electrode or a rotating chalk disk and a metal electrode. Passing an intermittent electric current, for example from a carbon microphone, between the chalk and metal would cause the chalk to adhere and then slip, and the resulting pull/release action on the electrode was transmitted to a speaker diaphragm by a string.

I accidentally found this property/ reaction between metals and various soft foods when I was a kid in the 1980s. I was experimenting with what I could use to make batteries. Well more so seeing what would work as an electrolyte, and if any of them would allow reforming of metals so they could recharge. I mentioned I was just a kid right?) I didn't realize there was anything particularly special about it and shrugged it off as something mildly interesting. Makes you wonder how many other discoveries have happened but not realized.

Yes, it was crazy to me as a physicist entering materials science to realize that there's nothing all that special going on with adhesives, just a whole lot of surface contact. Most things that touch only actually make atomic contact on a small fraction of the surfaces. Pretty much anything that can go from liquid to solid can be a glue, even metal can! Which is what solder is. But! Wetting is important, just because you have a liquid on a solid doesn't mean it fills in all the nooks and crannies and bonds to it. Surface energy does matter too, which is why teflon is very hard to stick to

I'm trying to adhere to your lecture material but this lesson didn't really stick. I just can seem to bond with you on this. At least it wasn't tacky.

Gonna guess the blue was copper salts formed by electrolysis.

Very surprising when the scientist in the paper you were talking about ended up being my professor from undergrad!

I feel like you could stick a smooth metal plate to a banana just with its moisture and surface tension though haha

I am not a chemistry person, but I greatly appreciate your explanations. Water is a glue?!?! Mind blown!

Now I want electroadhesive hairspray.

10:28, that 'movie magic' transition to you finishing up a few dotted lines was comedy gold 😂

And now I'm curious about all the different types of glue and how they work. Hide glue in luthiery, flour paste and paper, contact glue.. so many adhesives out there.

You say COVID, but one notices the espresso martini look'n drink on the table.

I feel like you're overthinking this. Surface imperfections filled with monomers or other small molecules (like in the case of water) that then polymerize (or freeze) create tiny mechanical locks against lateral movement of the adhesive in relation to the bonded surface. Perpendicular movements are then mitigated by vanderwaal forces as well as chemical bonding, with the significance of each varying depending on the adhesive and the bonded surface. In the case of electroadhesion, it seems to require a soft material or one that is partially liquid. I bet the electron migration at the interface is carrying other ions along for the ride via electrostatic effects in the same way that dendrite formation occurs across the electrolyte of batteries, again creating tiny mechanical locks at the interface.

Gotta love the new science being discovered and explored. This could dead end to a ‘neat’ thing or open up whole new technologies. Damn fine work from the team and as always damn fine work from George.

Applications... prank your siblings by sticking their jello to their spoon?