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Nitro Joe brings his science based
program to the Lincoln Public Library
[June 21, 2025]
Thursday, June 19, Nitro Joe
returned to the Lincoln Public Library with his science-based
entertainment program.
Nitro Joe greeted everyone and said
he would do science that was big, fun, exciting and maybe a little
crazy. With science, he said you must follow three rules:
1. No talking while I am talking. It is the best way to listen.
2. Don’t touch my stuff. Some of the science stuff can be dangerous
and can poke, shock, cut, burn or blow you up.
3. Have fun.
To show the difference between magic and science, Nitro Joe does
occasional magic tricks. It helps everyone understand the first rule
of science, which is observation.
Nitro Joe started with a card trick and asked a child from the
audience to choose a card from the deck. First, she flipped them
over and put them face up.
Magic is about deception, but Nitro
Joe said with science, you learn and grow.
After the child put the card flat
against her stomach so he could not see it, Nitro Joe asked her to
hand him the card. He then held the card with tongs and lit the card
on fire before placing it in a pan with a lid to put out the fire.
Lighting the card on fire produced light, heat, smoke and ashes.
When Nitro Joe opened the lid and the child took the card out of the
pan, the card was not burnt.
Cards are made of paper, which is what makes the trick work. Nitro
Joe said paper can be torn and crumpled up, but it is still paper.
In science, that is a physical change.
Lighting the paper on fire makes light, heat, smoke and ashes, which
Nitro Joe said is a chemical change. Chemical changes can look like
magic if you do not know what is going on. He told the kids to
observe, watch and study.
As Nitro Joe used various tools to light the paper on fire, he
reminded the kids not to play with fire.
In science, we use our observations to make an educated, scientific
guess, which is a hypothesis.
Since the paper burned, Nitro Joe
said I think any kind of paper will burn up and make light, heat,
smoke and ashes.
After a hypothesis, Nitro Joe said we do experiments. He lit another
piece of paper on fire to see if it produced light, heat and smoke.
However, the paper he used just disappeared as soon as he lit it on
fire.
Research showed Nitro Joe what he used was nitro cellulose, which
magicians use all the time in tricks. Nitro cellulose is “flash
paper” with little wood fiber, so it causes a chemical change.
Next, Nitro Joe showed everyone one of the scariest, most dangerous
and most powerful things in the kitchen. Everyone was surprised when
he showed them foil.
When he asked the audience why they did not think foil was
dangerous, Nitro Joe reminded them that millions of turkeys are
incinerated with it each year.
Over 150 years ago, foil was worth more than gold, but technology
changed so well, it is now worth pennies. Nitro Joe said when you
have the technology to make things change, the world changes right
behind it.
Hydrocarbons are extremely cheap in the end. Nitro Joe said right
now hydrocarbons are expensive. However, once we get over that hump,
we can use the power of the hydrocarbons to generate so much energy
for pennies.
Video - Nitro Joe performs
experiments at the Lincoln Public Library
For the next experiment, Nitro Joe
used sodium hydroxide (NaOH), which he said is used in many cleaning
products. He put on gloves because NaOH is so good at cleaning, it
gets rid of almost all organic material and skin is organic
material.
Nitro Joe poured 75 milliliters of NaOH into a small flask and added
a little foil. What he wanted to do was extract the hydrogen from
the foil and the NaOH. Na, or sodium would separate from the OH,
which is the oxide, and it would break down.
Next, Nitro Joe placed a balloon
over the flask to collect the NaOH and foil. He said it is a very
crude and basic process of collecting hydrogen. If hydrogen is
collected it can be mixed with carbon to make various hydrocarbons,
which Nitro Joe said are extremely powerful and very cheap.
As the balloon expanded, what was in the flask was clear at the
bottom but started to get darker and cloudy as the hydrogen, oxygen
and sodium separated. Nitro Joe said there is so much power in
there, which people will be able to use cheaply in the future.
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After choosing another helper
from the audience to hold a long piece of piping, Nitro Joe
taped the balloon filled with hydrogen, helium and drops of
water vapor to the piping. He told the kids if they felt any
drops of water vapor on their skin, their skin would not melt
off.
Nitro Joe had the kids count down from ten. When he lowered the
piping and balloon to a lit torch, the flame burst the balloon
and kids screamed in surprise.
For just pennies, Nitro Joe generated lots of energy. He said
the future will be phenomenal if we focus on good, clean,
conservative energy. We have an abundance of hydrogen and carbon
dioxide in the air. He has been using carbon dioxide in one form
or another for 40 years.
Frozen carbon dioxide, which is dry ice, was in Nitro Joe’s bag.
He read the dangers listed on the bag of dry ice, which included
do not touch with your hands, do not put in drinks, do not eat,
do not touch the skin, mouth or eyes. Other warnings said do not
put in air tight containers or sealed glass containers, keep it
away from eyes, nose, mouth and tongue and keep out of the reach
of children.
Because dry ice is 103.9 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, Nitro
Joe said a person’s fingers can freeze to the ice in two
seconds.
Taking a coin that is 99.9 percent silver with some gold
accents, Nitro Joe passed the coin around asking kids if the
coin was hot, cold or somewhere in the middle. There was no
right or wrong answer, but all the kids said it was in the
middle. It was not burning hot which would sizzle their heads or
not so cold it would freeze their cheeks. He said the coin was
about the same as our body temperature, which is 98.6 degrees
Fahrenheit.
For the next experiment, Nitro Joe used the block of dry ice. He
placed the coin in the dry ice which caused the coin to shake
and change color within seven or eight seconds. He then removed
the coin with tweezers.
Dry ice goes through a sublimation process. Nitro Joe said there
are three states of matter. Some are solid and change shape when
bent or broken. Some are liquid like milk, juice, water or soda.
Then there is air or smoke, which are gasses.
When ice cubes melt, the solid turns into a liquid. When liquid
is boiled, it turns into a steam, or a gas, through evaporation.
Nitro Joe said sublimation happens when you go from a solid to a
gas without it turning into a liquid. Dry ice goes straight from
a solid into a gas.
Next, Nitro Joe brought around a beaker with a cloud of carbon
dioxide. He squeezed the carbon dioxide gas by putting it into a
flask with a smaller opening then putting a cork on the flask to
generate more pressure. Pressure needs a release, so when kids
touched the flask, the cork popped off.
To do a simple chemical test on carbon dioxide, Nitro Joe had a
universal indicator. The universal indicator tells if something
is acidic like lemon juice, orange juice or vinegar or if it’s
basic like soap. There is acid and there is alkali.
In a beaker, Nitro Joe added a dark
liquid to make the water green. Nitro Joe then added around five
drops of sodium hydroxide, which made the water purple. He said
carbon dioxide is an acid and acids and bases do different things.
The acid color is yellow or red.
Adding dry ice to the beaker made
the liquid turn from purple to blue to green then to yellow.
Eventually, the liquid turned red.
In another beaker, Nitro Joe added
baby shampoo then put dry ice in the beaker to make “foggy” bubbles.
The bubbles went everywhere. He then walked around the room and put
the mixture in kids’ hair.
By putting water in a tube, then
adding dry ice to it and dipping the tip of the tube in watered down
baby shampoo, Nitro Joe made one foggy bubble at a time. The foggy
bubbles looked like ping pong balls popping out one at time.
Video - Nitro Joe creates fog
for the kids at Lincoln Public Library
Carbon dioxide is heavier than
regular air, and Nitro Joe said that means it goes down.
After breaking dry ice into smaller pieces, Nitro Joe added the dry
ice to a bucket of warm water to make fog. He then brought the
bucket around and “poured” the fog on kids.
Nitro Joe said everything he did was regular, old fashioned science.
He just wanted everyone to see something in a new way and hopefully
have fun with it. Always observe.
To find out how to do the science experiments, Nitro Joe told
parents they could look at his website:
www.nitrojoe.org.
[Angela Reiners]
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