How to truly remove an ant colony

[1MileCrash]

Casting A Fire Ant Colony With Molten Aluminum
http://vitaminl.tv/video/1599

 

[zoobyshoe]

That was very cool! I'm surprised how much aluminum it took. The finished product looked like some sort of coral structure.

I think only about 5 ants escaped, too.

 

[fluidistic]

Wow impressive. I'm actually impressed by at least 2 things:
1)I would have thought that the aluminium wouldn't go that deep without solidifying. It must have been extremely hot, significantly hotter than the melting point?
2)The ant nest is surprisingly small to me... with a single entrance?!

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

I would have thought that creating that huge whole at the top would collapse and plug a lot of the tunnels

btw, if you do a google image search you'll find a lot of other casts. Some quite large.

 

[Office_Shredder]

Greg, I was also surprised the structure of the colony was preserved with the weight of the aluminum at the top pouring down and everything.

fluid, it might be that some tunnels collapsed during the process and so we only got to see a portion of the nest.

 

[Ben Niehoff]

Actually, it shouldn't be too surprising that a cast can be made this way. Traditional casts are made of wet sand (the fineness of the sand affecting the quality of the cast). So it is certainly possible to pour molten metal into a cavity in sand and have it fill the space. There is some technique involved, and my guess is they're aware of that.

 

[turbo]

If you want to kill a lot of ants, mix some borax and powdered sugar and dissolve them in water. Set that mixture out where the ants can get it. The borax will plug up the guts of the ants. The foragers will take that mix back to the colony, and kill them all, starting with the queen who gets dibs on all sweet stuff.

 

[Student100]

Someone call PETA.

 

[1MileCrash]

Wow impressive. I'm actually impressed by at least 2 things:
1)I would have thought that the aluminium wouldn't go that deep without solidifying. It must have been extremely hot, significantly hotter than the melting point?
2)The ant nest is surprisingly small to me... with a single entrance?!

From what I've read, it's at around 1200* F.

 

[zoobyshoe]

From what I've read, it's at around 1200* F.

The melting point is: 1,221°F (660.3°C) and the boiling point is: 4,566°F (2,519°C), so there seems to be a lot of room for pouring it well above the melting point. How hot an amateur can get it is probably most dependent on what kind of crucible they have available.

 

[1MileCrash]

Well in the videos I've heard them say "pouring 1200* F into an ant hill" but I suppose it is likely that they just looked up the melting point and put that number.

It seems like if it was near the actual melting point, most of it would be starting to solidify by the time they were pouring, and whatever came out would be 'blobby.'

 

[zoobyshoe]

Well in the videos I've heard them say "pouring 1200* F into an ant hill" but I suppose it is likely that they just looked up the melting point and put that number.

It seems like if it was near the actual melting point, most of it would be starting to solidify by the time they were pouring, and whatever came out would be 'blobby.'

I would imagine it's trial and error. If it cools too fast one time, keep it in the furnace longer before the next pour. That sort of thing.

Edit: it's also conceivable the nest was actually a lot deeper but the aluminum "froze" at a certain point before the full depth was reached.

 

[AlephZero]

Earth is a fairly good insulator, so it doesn't take the heat out of the aluminum too fast. The traditional way to make metal castings was using sand moulds. The main difference is that Earth probably has a higher water content that industrial molding sand.

You don't need exotic crucible materials to cast aluminum. Iron doesn't melt until about 2700F (1500C). You should be able to get aluminum up to about 1600F with a simple gas furnace. Casting aluminum barely get the iron glowing red hot.

The tranditional way to make an engine cylinder block by sand casting is a lot more "delicate" (though it doesn't look that way if you see it done). There, you first make the "ants nest" out of sand bonded with resin, for the water and air passages, and then cast the metal around it. When I started work in industry, the company was still casting 27-liter V12 aero engine blocks with sand molds (for use in power boat racing, not aircraft), The sand molds of the internal parts were works of art. These pictures http://www.syegd.com/en/product-info.php?cid=17 are much simpler.

And the real work of art was the wooden "pattern" for molding the sand. Those had to be made like a 3-D jigsaw puzzle, so you could remove all the pieces of wood without breaking the sand inside. No computer aided design or robots back then - just a guy sitting at a carpenter's bench using hand tools.

 

[OmCheeto]

I probably should have, and did, google what I remembered, before I posted; "10 tons of molten aluminum??!?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFg21x2sj-M​

Ants are cool.

ps. I concur with Student100; "Someone call PETA."

 

[zoobyshoe]

Earth is a fairly good insulator, so it doesn't take the heat out of the aluminum too fast. The traditional way to make metal castings was using sand moulds. The main difference is that Earth probably has a higher water content that industrial molding sand.

You don't need exotic crucible materials to cast aluminum. Iron doesn't melt until about 2700F (1500C). You should be able to get aluminum up to about 1600F with a simple gas furnace. Casting aluminum barely get the iron glowing red hot.

With all this in mind, casting ant nests is much less demanding than it looks, despite the complexity of the nest.

I've read about amateurs melting aluminum with charcoal, an old hair dryer as air blower, and a clay flower pot furnace. You need proper protective gear, of course, and 100% reliable tongs to lift the crucible, but all this is well within most people's reach.

 

[Student100]

I probably should have, and did, google what I remembered, before I posted; "10 tons of molten aluminum??!?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFg21x2sj-M​

Ants are cool.

ps. I concur with Student100; "Someone call PETA."

Jesus.

 

[Nugatory]

Someone call PETA.

You may get a different reaction from people who live in fire-ant country in North America... These ants are solenopsis invicta, a non-native invasive species that is destructive to native flora and fauna and a very unpleasant neighbor.

 

[consciousness]

Killing ants to remove pests is acceptable, but to create "Art"... that cannot be justified in any way.

 

[dlgoff]

Killing ants to remove pests is acceptable, but to create "Art"... that cannot be justified in any way.

Are you kidding me?

art 1 (ärt)
n.
1. Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/art

 

[1MileCrash]

Killing ants to remove pests is acceptable, but to create "Art"... that cannot be justified in any way.

Are you being serious right now?

 

[AlephZero]

art 1 (ärt)
n.
1. Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.

I think that is "art" as a synonym for "craft" - or the section in Patent applications that used to be called "Prior Art", i.e. what other people had already done.

Not "art" as in "something you can put in an art gallery".

 

[1MileCrash]

I think this was originally done to study the form of the nest. In any case, if killing them just to kill them is acceptable, then killing them with the added benefit of creating art is acceptable.

And then, there's also the fact that they are just ants.

 

[OmCheeto]

hmmm...

A young immigrant by the name of Michelangelo moved into my neighborhood last week. He was kind of cute, as he was young, kind of like a puppy. But he'd taken up residence in my backyard. Dug a hole he did. At night, he'd come out of the hole, and take an axe to my house. I found that a bit annoying. During the day, I would walk by his hole, and he'd jump out and bite me. I told him to leave, but he just looked at me like he owned the place, and would blurt out; "I'm an artist!"

Having not seen any art, I decided he was a liar, and poured a slurry of small rocks, sand, and epoxy down his hole. I knew it would kill him, but I didn't care. He no longer tormented me. I had killed squatters in my backyard before, but I had always used poison, as they were always breaking into my house to steal food. It's easy to lace cookies with arsenic.

So I dug up the the rock-sand-epoxy thing that was the form of his "art" he was living in, and decided, he really was an artist.

But I was still glad he was dead.

 

[consciousness]

I think this was originally done to study the form of the nest. In any case, if killing them just to kill them is acceptable, then killing them with the added benefit of creating art is acceptable.

And then, there's also the fact that they are just ants.

This guy is selling the casts. He is killing ants to make money. For all we know he could be searching for large ant hills with a bucketful of aluminium in his hand, thinking about his next sale. It is morally questionable so yeah, I was being serious.

Are you serious about "Just ants"? If all ants were to somehow vanish then the whole ecosystem would probably break down. And not to mention, ants are awesome

 

[OmCheeto]

This guy is selling the casts. He is killing ants to make money. For all we know he could be searching for large ant hills with a bucketful of aluminium in his hand, thinking about his next sale.

Brilliant! We should show this video to all the exterminators in the south. Not only would we be rid of a hideous invasive species, we'd have tens of thousands of pieces of art for sale. I think they'd make great x-mas presents.

I'm investing in kiln manufacturing companies, and aluminum.

...
Are you serious about "Just ants"? If all ants were to somehow vanish...

Strawman. You lose.

 

[russ_watters]

Well in the videos I've heard them say "pouring 1200* F into an ant hill" but I suppose it is likely that they just looked up the melting point and put that number.

It seems like if it was near the actual melting point, most of it would be starting to solidify by the time they were pouring, and whatever came out would be 'blobby.'

A couple of things we know and some speculation:

1. We know the aluminum is near its melting temp because as it pours, it is forming a solidified, thin foil skin.
2. Heat of fusion for most materials is very large, so even as it starts to solidify, it takes a large energy outflow to solidify a little bit.
3. It is therefore likely that as the aluminum flows into the anthill, it coats the walls of the tunnels with a thin layer of solid aluminum, which helps stabilize the tunnels while providing pipes for the transfer of more molen aluminum.

 

[consciousness]

Strawman. You lose.

The fallacy fallacy.

 

[1MileCrash]

A couple of things we know and some speculation:

1. We know the aluminum is near its melting temp because as it pours, it is forming a solidified, thin foil skin.
2. Heat of fusion for most materials is very large, so even as it starts to solidify, it takes a large energy outflow to solidify a little bit.
3. It is therefore likely that as the aluminum flows into the anthill, it coats the walls of the tunnels with a thin layer of solid aluminum, which helps stabilize the tunnels while providing pipes for the transfer of more molen aluminum.

Ah, thank you!

 

[zoobyshoe]

This guy is selling the casts. He is killing ants to make money. For all we know he could be searching for large ant hills with a bucketful of aluminium in his hand, thinking about his next sale. It is morally questionable so yeah, I was being serious.

Are you serious about "Just ants"? If all ants were to somehow vanish then the whole ecosystem would probably break down. And not to mention, ants are awesome

Remember, though, as nugatory pointed out:

These ants are solenopsis invicta, a non-native invasive species that is destructive to native flora and fauna and a very unpleasant neighbor.

It is also doubtful that one guy killing one nest a day could make a dent in this population. I would wager as soon as he clears an area another nest is started there within a week.

 

[Student100]

You may get a different reaction from people who live in fire-ant country in North America... These ants are solenopsis invicta, a non-native invasive species that is destructive to native flora and fauna and a very unpleasant neighbor.

Yeah I know that, I've been bitten by them. I was trying to be funny, and failed.

 

[chuffmonkey]

Kidnap the Queen, as without a Queen, the ant empire would fall, like the Romans... Be very careful though, as crimes against the monarchy still carry the death sentence here in the U.K

 

[OmCheeto]

Yeah I know that, I've been bitten by them. I was trying to be funny, and failed.

I thought it was funny. "People for the Ethical Treatment of Ants".

 

[dlgoff]

Be very careful though, as crimes against the monarchy still carry the death sentence here in the U.K

Some places there doesn't need to be a crime.

 

[jedishrfu]

Kidnap the Queen, as without a Queen, the ant empire would fall, like the Romans... Be very careful though, as crimes against the monarchy still carry the death sentence here in the U.K

Fire ant colonies are usually multi-queen colonies. Queens live for several years creating roughly 9 million new fireants so the Ant Art is doing its part to eliminate the pest in some small way.

http://www.desertmuseum.org/invaders/invaders_fireant.php