when i first got my silver play button forpassing 100,000 subscribers, my first thought was is this real silver? is the gold play button real gold? if only i knew someone who was willing todestroy their play buttons. [dan] i can help you with that. [intro] [zack] so dan is from the youtube channelwhat’s inside. and dan, what in the world drove you to destroyyour buttons? [dan] it was a tough decision but that’swhat we do, we cut stuff open for our channel.
so when we got the silver play button we thoughtthat would be a really funny thing if we cut it in half and then hung it back up and itactually signifies our channel pretty well. but then after we did that and we marchedonto a million subscribers, i was a little nervous to do it but we took it on our triparound the world. so it was a fun trip and we cut it open incasey neistat’s office so it was worth it, but honestly it was a little sad cutting itin half. [zack] where did you take this again? [dan] so we took this thing to china, japan,guam, australia, dubai, the netherlands, ireland, england, paris, new york, austin texas…justwith this button, like 11 pounds in my backpack
the entire time. [zack] well i know one place this button hasn’tbeen and that’s inside of this electron microscope. what do you say we toss it in here and seewhat it’s actually made of. [dan] it’s funny cuz my thing’s been cutin half so you’d think that i’d be okay with it, but just as long as it doesn’tturn it purple or like blue or something i’m good with it! [zack] i can’t promise anything, but let’sdo it! [dan] great.
[zack] so here’s the back of the play button. this is the gold one and it looks like there’sjust a series of phillips head screws all along the back and the back is made of wood. and then we got a wood panel right here andthen a metal plate on the outside. this back panel comes off. [dan] that’s it. now you’ve got these 4 screws right there. but you want to take…oh there’s even more…sorry! there are more screws.
[zack] well, we got a screwdriver, let’sdo it! [dan] okay lift it up and then hold onto theback so it doesn’t fall out but because right now we’ve just got the glass on thisside, but basically you just have to take this panel off. [zack] oh boy. [dan] there you go. now you got it. hold the frame. that’s it.
[zack] we’re getting closer. [dan] gold button right there. it’s super dirty. i don’t think i even washed it before iput it back in. look at all the fingerprints on it. [zack] there it is. this thing is so heavy. geez. [dan] look how dirty it is.
[zack] looks like you cut it right along thatscrew line there. alright so here, this is the electron microscope…partof this microscope. you can see the electron beams come out ofthat little silver thing right there. and then what tells us the makeup of the actualitem inside is this part right here. and this is the energy dispersive x-ray spectrometrygizmo and that tells us what the play button is actually made up of. let’s put it in here. and we are good to go. alright dan, your play button is now insideof the machine.
how do you feel? [dan] there’s no turning back. this is legit here. i’m a little nervous. [zack] inside of this machine there’s avacuum and it sucking all of the air out because an electron microscope can’t work in normalair. there needs to be zero air for it to function. and this is a live feed of different camerasinside of the machine. so this is top down.
you can see kind of the arrow of the playbutton there. this is a side profile. and this is a zoomed in shot of the play buttonitself. and then on this screen we have a readoutof what actually the play button is made up of. so we have this nickel right here and we alsohave a little bit of gold. there’s a huge chunk of nickel and thenwe have the gold right below that at 15 percent and then we have the zinc and the copper. and the zinc and the copper is kind of makingup like a brass alloy, but on the surface
most of it is the nickel and the gold. you can see here that it’s evenly dispersedacross the button. all of the nickel and the gold are mixed together. we’re done testing the top part of it. we just barely pulled it out of the machineand i’m a little bit surprised that it’s not…i didn’t see as much gold as i thoughtthere would be because right here…show them on the bottom there. [dan] it says 24 karat gold plated if youcan see it just right there. and 24 karat gold is known as pure gold, 100percent gold or 99.9 percent gold.
[zack] so let’s flip it over, we’ll stickthe back in there and see if it’s “plated†on the back. [dan] the back’s not as shiny. you can see it on there, it’s just…i don’tknow, it’s just not as shiny. check the front out. it’s shiny, it’s glossy. the back just has these scratches on it andit’s flat…so i think we might be onto something. oh and look at this.
you can see the shine comes around the edgeright here but then it’s not on this part…so… [zack] interesting. let’s find out. so right now inside of the machine we havethe back of the gold play button here and this is the zoomed in portion of that button. and if we go over here to the graph of thecomposition we still see the nickel and here we have the gold. and it’s actually a larger percentage ofgold on the back of the button than we saw on the front of the button which is very interesting.
the machine…we’re getting like a lot ofreadings inside of it. we’re getting nickel, we’re getting gold,we’re getting copper, we’re getting one other thing and we’re trying to decide likewhether it’s just on the exterior or the interior. the only problem with that is that the buttonis too big for the machine. so there’s no way to get a reading of thiscross section inside of that thing. so i’m going to try to shave a little bitof it off and see if we can get enough of a sample to make it work. so i just took a small fragment from thatlittle screw hole there and we’re putting
it on this tape right here so that it willgo on the machine. that particular fragment is from the centerof the gold play button right here so we’ll be able to see what’s inside of the buttoninstead of just on the surface. there’s that itty bitty sample inside ofthe big machine and we are ready to go. here’s the side profile of it and we gotthe beam coming down from the top, sample is here, this is the super zoomed in electronmicroscope image of it so you can see all of the detail. if we come over here to this monitor it’sgot the center, so the inside of the gold play button is copper and zinc and there’sactually no gold on the inside so we know
that’s all part of the coating. the two most common elements on the surfaceof the play button, nickel and gold, are not inside of the button. so now we’re going to check and see whatthe silver button is made of. inside of the machine it goes. so with the silver play button inside of themachine you can see right here is the top down view…here we have the side cross section,and this is the magnified image of the play button. and over here we have this reading which isactually 100 percent nickel on the surface
of that play button. so it might be something a little bit differentunderneath the surface, but the surface is 100 percent nickel. so we zoomed in a little bit on a scratchon the silver play button and if we look over here it actually has some copper inside ofit as well. so if we jump down here the copper is 6.3percent and the nickel is 93. so the nickel is definitely 100 percent thesurface of the silver play button, but it looks like it’s alloy underneath with alittle bit of copper added to it. so i was a little bit surprised that therewasn’t as much gold as i thought there was
going to be. [dan] i mean to youtube’s credit, 24 karatdoes rub off easily and we traveled to probably 6 different continents with it. so some of it could have rubbed off. [zack] that’s true cuz it was in like yourpocket and your backpack and everything like that. and also on the front of the button whereit’s all smooth and glossy there was 15 percent gold and like 85 percent nickel. but on the back of the button where therewas those ridges it was actually more gold.
and i think that’s because it wouldn’trub off as easily. [dan] probably. i mean we did do the part, which i liked,where we took off that small spec that shouldn’t have been 24 karat gold plated. and you got to give youtube credit becausethey could easily send these things out because the metal that they send looks like gold already,but they actually plated these gold play buttons because we saw it on the front, the back andwe didn’t see it in the middle. so it’s on there. [zack] it’s real gold.
the gold play button is gold, which is cool. one other variable that we haven’t reallythought about as well is that the electron microscope, when it looks at the surface ofsomething it’s actually penetrating the surface just a little bit. so that also might be why there’s some variancebetween the gold and the nickel on the gold play button. so i think it would be really interestingto see actually how these things are made and what the process is for getting the goldon them. [dan] yeah.
can you imagine like going into a buildingwhere they make these things and you just have like a pile of like hundreds of goldbuttons everywhere? [zack] that would be so cool! [dan] that would be pretty fun to see. [zack] i would just grab one before i hita million subscribers. [dan] i would just try to find the diamondplay buttons and take that home so i could cut it open. [zack] we’ll get it early. [dan] and if you take a look back here, wehave both the gold play button and the silver
zack just stuffed the silver play button here. he has no respect for it. in fact take a look at it. he put it in backwards! you see that?! it’s a rewind button now! [zack] that’s what happens. and speaking of the silver play button, it’snot actually silver. and there was no silver inside of it.
which, you know, it’s fine. it’s not plated in silver or anything. the exterior was pure nickel and the insidewas a nickel – copper blend. [dan] we got this in may of 2016 before wetook our trip around the world with it. and what i’ve seen is that the buttons thatare coming out now are a little bit different. so they’ve changed the gold play buttona little so zack’s going to get it soon. you guys are helping him. he is on the way. you’ve gained like 300,000 subscribers inthe last couple of months.
[zack] it’s been a lot. [dan] it’s going to come soon enough andas soon as you get yours i want to test that one out and see if it’s the same 24 karatplated gold. youtube’s probably watching this right nowand they’re like uh oh, when we send zack his let’s put a little bit more gold onthat one. [zack] i’m fine with that. give me as much gold as you want! if you want to see how well traveled thisgold play button is and where some of the gold might have rubbed off, go ahead and clickthis video right here and it will take you
to dan’s channel where he actually cut itopen with casey neistat. [dan] it was a once in a lifetime experience. [zack] pretty cool. [dan] it was great. and so i’m excited, as soon as you get yourslet us know if you want us to cut it open. [zack] i think i’m going to keep mine inthe frame and i’m going to keep it facing the right direction. [dan] alright if you change your mind… [zack] we’ll see.
okay, thanks a ton for watching. i’ll see you around! [dan] see you guys!
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