Can You Swim in Shade Balls?

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Publicado 2019-06-13
I bought 10,000 shade balls and tried to swim in them. They appear to act like a non-Newtonian fluid: rigid under high shear stress, but they flow like a liquid under low shear.
All the signed shade balls have now been mailed out - thanks for your support!

Receiving a shade ball:
1. Support Veritasium on any Patreon tier and enter your address ve42.co/patreon
2. In about a month I will send out signed shade balls
3. I will cover all shipping costs but if things get really crazy I will prioritize existing Patreon supporters and higher tiers

My sense was that swimming in shade balls would be difficult but still doable. This was roughly true for the single layer of shade balls. The shade balls slide past each other so they act like a liquid, albeit a viscous one owing to their significant inertia. It's much more intense exercise and it's also annoying to be bombarded with shade balls on all sides of your body, particularly your head. With multi-layer shade balls (as exists on much of LA reservoir) things get significantly more difficult. The balls bunch together and when you try to move through them quickly, they become more rigid, providing significant resistance to motion. This has the benefit that you can lie on them and as long as they stay trapped under you, you can float on them. But a little bit of motion causes them to move around and you sink through quickly.

Special thanks to our Patreon supporters! Join this community to help us keep our videos free, forever:
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Huge thanks to:
Jordan Schnabel and Cristian Carretero for filming and swimming and providing lifeguard services.
Raquel Nuno for filming and putting up with me.

Music from epidemicsound.com/ "Dubstep Mammoth 2" "Finally Here (Instrumental)" "The Last Arrival" "Sundown Love (Instrumental)"

Todos los comentarios (21)
  • @pudgeypig3521
    those are the things mr incredible got bodied with in the first movie.
  • @CapitaILetter
    I am pretty sure Youtube's gonna recommend me this 5 years later
  • @Proxyhedron
    It was really interesting noticing how he was essentially approaching drowning. There are very specific physiological symptoms that are present in someone who is starting to have that reaction- triggered by the feeling of failing to support yourself in water- that he was absolutely showing. Specifically when he attempted swimming in multiple layers, the way his voice had that panicked "cracking" and he was breathing very heavily. If this was the depth of a reservoir, and not a pool, you would definitely die.
  • @ChosenWan
    seeing light rays pass through the multi-layered shade balls at 6:50 is priceless! thanks for sharing this amazing experience with us
  • @reddy4236
    Girl: I think he's cheating Him and the boys:
  • @apotato8354
    "But its like quicksand" - famous last words
  • @ridwanquick
    Exactly as I thought. 1. You can swim in shade balls, just harder to do. So you should not. Great to hear that the manufacturer sees this as a concern. 2. You can swim in shade balls, just not the shade balls in the water reservoir. 3. Pool with water and floating balls, hop in. 4. They do look like boba.
  • @deeanna8448
    The last part with swimming in multiple layers gave me anxiety.😱
  • @Forum4life07
    "lets see if you can swim in shade balls" -cameraman already in the pool "am i a joke to you?"
  • 1:33 - "We will not promote this as a thing people should do!" 9:32 - "This feels incredible!.. Feels like being in a ball pit!"
  • @peregrina7701
    I love Derek's belly laughs. Also Raquel (presumably) laughing at him off camera. Part of why I love Veritasium videos is that y'all stay upbeat and leave in the goofiness.
  • @maxniemi4584
    i love it when veritasium does fun stuff like this
  • @DJET723
    Honestly I’d have an anxiety attack trying to get out of a something like this.
  • @shawnjs7589
    "I can hardly tell that there is water under me, it's kind if like sa-" -water seeps through He proceeds to drown
  • @immanuel1329
    “I don’t think you can swim in shade balls”; as he starts drowning.
  • @HighImHi
    Turtles: no more plastic Human: let's swim in plastic
  • @lilmoo3798
    The pov of underwater with the shade balls above seriously looks so pretty.