BBC3 Secrets Of The Universe - Extra Scene - Hydrolysis

Here's an extra scene that we couldn't squeeze into my BBC3 science doc "Secrets Of The Universe" (TX November 2010). The show told the '13.7 billion year story of you' by using big stunts to bring the science to life. Here's the blurb: "Greg Foot buckles up for a 13.7 billion year trip through time, to answer the biggest question of them all - where do we come from? But the last thing you'll find in this programme is a particle accelerator. All Greg needs is the stuff that's lying around. So, you want to prove the Big Bang really happened? Easy - it can all be done by playing guitar at 60 mph and blowing up a watermelon in super slow-motion. What about calculating the speed of light? By microwaving ants on full power, of course. Whether Greg is squeezing a car into suitcase or making Big Ben strike 13 o'clock - this is the story of how we all got here, as you've never seen it before." This clip is a supersized version of the little demo I did in the show where I used a battery to rip water molecules apart and release the hydrogen inside. The test for hydrogen is to light it. If you get a pop, voila it's hydrogen. So we thought why don't I do a big one up on my roof? We got some car batteries and a paddling pool and set it going. Got a pretty sweet amount of hydrogen and when we lit it got a little flame. But that wasn't enough so we called in a canister of hydrogen, just so we could get a proper flame! The cool thing with this is that all the stuff exploding here - hydrogen - was made in the Big Bang, so it's over 13 billion years old. Which is kinda crazy cos when you drink a glass of water you're drinking down something from the dawn of time. Which I think is pretty neat.