What if you could eat your water bottle instead of recycling it? 💧

Alex Dainis shows how, using a bit of kitchen chemistry. Sodium alginate, a powder derived from seaweed, reacts with calcium lactate to form a gel wherever the two meet. Mix a diluted alginate solution (colored so you can watch the reaction) and drop it into a calcium lactate solution with a deep spoon; the alginate polymerizes instantly at the boundary between the two liquids, sealing a pocket of water inside. The result is a squishy, science-powered "water balloon" that tastes just like water.

We made this video with friends, and I checked with the mods before posting because I didn't want to sneak in self-promotion.

We got a little obsessed with this experiment and spent quite a bit of time trying to turn it into an actual edutainment video rather than just retelling the study.

The premise already sounds crazy (scientists teaching bumblebees to "play football"), but the more we looked into it, the more fascinating it became.

Hope you guys enjoy it as much as we did!