The video follows Destin from Smarter Every Day as he undertakes an adventurous journey to replicate a scientific experiment of boiling water at various altitudes while climbing Mount Kilimanjaro. The experiment focuses on understanding how the boiling point of water changes with altitude due to pressure variations. Destin, accompanied by a local guide, Shadrach, and a support team, documents the boiling temperatures at different camps, such as at 8175 ft and reaching the peak at 19,341 ft.

Capturing the complexities and challenges of high-altitude climbing, the video provides not only scientific insights but also personal stories and the planning required for such an expedition. Significant focus is laid on acclimatization, the body's physiological responses to decreased oxygen levels, and precautionary measures to combat altitude sickness. The team uses traditional and modern techniques to monitor their health, such as checking pulse oxygen levels and listening to the calming empowerment of Tanzanian porters’ songs during tense moments.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. acclimatization [əˌklaɪmətəˈzeɪʃən] - (n.) - The process of adjusting to new temperature, climate, or environment to minimize physiological stress. - Synonyms: (adaptation, adjustment, accommodation)

What are we doing right now? We are going to 16, which is our acclimatization, and then come back to the game

2. hypoxia [haɪˈpɒksiə] - (n.) - A condition in which there is an insufficient supply of oxygen to the body. - Synonyms: (oxygen deficiency, anoxia, asphyxia)

And I lost my mind, literally, right. You're not able to survive this. Go to your regulator. Get all three switches up. And it had to do with something called hypoxia.

3. moorland [ˈmɔːrlænd] - (n.) - An expanse of open, uncultivated upland typically covered with heather, gorse, and bracken. - Synonyms: (upland, heathland, moor)

We were in the heather yesterday. Today we're in what's called the moorland.

4. ecological zone [ˌiːkəˈlɒdʒɪkəl zoʊn] - (n.) - A specific area that represents a distinct ecological environment, determined by factors like climate and vegetation. - Synonyms: (biome, habitat, environment)

We are crossing the natural border between forest and heather zone. So we are now entering the different ecological zone.

5. porter [ˈpɔːrtər] - (n.) - A person employed to carry luggage and other loads, especially in the mountains. - Synonyms: (carrier, bearer, hauler)

So at least you can. You can know how it feels being a porter. So you can relate to the team.

6. trekking [ˈtrɛkɪŋ] - (n.) - The act of making a long or difficult journey, especially on foot. - Synonyms: (hiking, journeying, backpacking)

The next zone that you walk through is the alpine desert.

7. thermometer calibration [θərˈmɒmətər ˌkælɪˈbreɪʃən] - (n.) - The process of setting a thermometer to accurately measure temperature based on known standards. - Synonyms: (adjustment, tuning, standardization)

thermometer calibration. Do you remember when Shadrach said, oh, I think we're going to get down to the seventies, and at the top we didn't. Well, calibration is an issue.

8. cardiovascular [ˌkɑːrdiəˈvæskjələr] - (adj.) - Relating to the heart and blood vessels, especially in terms of their role in moving blood through the body. - Synonyms: (heart-related, circulatory, cardiac)

I tried to limit the amount of oxygen intake during my workouts to try to, like, stress my cardiovascular system

9. altitude sickness [ˈæltɪˌtjuːd ˈsɪknəs] - (n.) - A pathological effect of altitude on humans, caused by acute exposure to low amounts of oxygen at high elevation. - Synonyms: (acute mountain sickness, hypobaropathy, soroche)

We also went to altitude to try to see how our bodies would react to over 14,000ft of altitude. Sickness affects different people in different ways.

10. expedition [ˌɛkspəˈdɪʃən] - (n.) - A journey undertaken by a group of people with a definite objective, especially that of exploration, research, or adventure. - Synonyms: (journey, exploration, voyage)

Experiencing genuine local culture and the supportive roles of guides and porters is crucial in ensuring the success of the expedition.

I Performed an Experiment on the Peak of Kilimanjaro - Smarter Every Day 302

Hey, it's me, Destin. Welcome back to Smarter every day. So, years ago, my buddy Brady Heron made, like, the coolest video I've ever watched on the Internet, or one of them, where he boiled water at different altitudes on his way up to base camp for Mount Everest. And I love it. Okay, the water is boiled now. And the boiled water temperature reaches 88. I love it. You should totally go watch this video. But today we are in Tanzania, and this is the first part of the trail to go all the way up to the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. And I asked Brady if I could replicate his video because I loved it. And he learned a few things along the way about using certain types of thermometers, and we're going to try to incorporate that stuff today.

And a long time ago, I made a video about hypoxia. NASA did an experiment where they put us in a chamber and we removed the oxygen from the tank. We simulated an altitude of 25,000ft elevation. And I lost my mind, literally, right. You're not able to survive this. Go to your regulator. Get all three switches up. And it had to do with something called hypoxia. And it's a. It's a fascinating thing that happens when you have lack of oxygen. So today on smarter every day, we're gonna boil water at different altitudes. And along the hike, we're gonna. We're gonna see how the temperature of the water changes and we're gonna talk about that.

But I think the water's almost boiling over here. Shadrach. Uh huh. Shadrach, right? Yeah. Shadrach. This is my guide. He's the man. Are we boiling? Yeah, we're still now boiling. Okay, let's go see. So how many different places do you think we're gonna boil? Yeah, we are going to boil the water like this. Like in every camp. Yeah. So this is our starting point. This is our beginning point. What's our altitude here? This is. This altitude is 8175. 8170ft, yeah. And where we are going is 9127 tonight. Tonight. And how high is the highest we're gonna go? The highest we can go. And probably we're gonna have time to boil the water like this, even if it will be difficult. But we will try to boil water at Uhuru Peak, which is 19,000.

Okay, we're boiling. You ready? Yeah. So you're in Celsius. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'll turn mine to Celsius. All right, here we go. Celsius, 92. 92.7 on one. You're 92.7. I'm 92.6. Okay, now you're a guide. You used to be a porter, right? Yeah. I miss. I used to be a porter, but sometimes I can kill even more what I'm carrying right now. Yeah, yeah. Was it fun being a porter? Very fun. And actually, it's a very tough job. And for me, I think it's good for those who want to become guides. It's good to start as a porter. So it will be like. It's a very good consideration for someone to start as a potter and become a guide. So at least you can. You can know how it feels being a potter. So you can relate to the team.

Yeah. This is fast camp. And we are at the elevations of 9200ft. And now we have 91.8. Yeah, mine's 91.6. And you hit lock. Yeah, the same. 91.6. Okay. No joke. Earthquake, right? Yes. We're in the rainforest right now. You can see all the vegetation and the trees are big. We are crossing the natural border between forest and heather zone. So we are now entering the different ecological zone. So the heather zone is characterized by what? The heather zone. Actually, this name is derived from the trees which dominated this area. I mean, those heza trees like Erica Borea and Filipia excelsa. So that's why we call this area. Are those latin names? Are these latin names? Yeah. Okay, you're correct.

Coming up on 10,000ft. 89.790.0. Very curious to see what the temperature will get at the summit. Yeah, as you can see, we started with 92.6. Yesterday was 91.4. And now we have 90.0. So as we going higher, it seems like the temperature is going down very quickly. All right, I think this is Kilimanjaro. Two days in, you finally get to see it. Altimeter says 11,500. Which is very correct. Very, very correct. Yeah, that's very correct. 389.4. Yeah, let us go with 89.4. Okay. We were in the heather yesterday. Today we're in what's called the moorland. But this feels like Utah or maybe, I don't know, parts of Arizona. So we're in the third region in terms of climate. So the correct number is 87.887.8. I got 87.3. Mine's 86.987.4. So this was 13. Seven.

Jeffrey. Yeah. Let's go, let's go, let's go. So I wasn't fast enough with the camera. But Elias is up there carrying my pack. Like the big pack. He was past me before I could even pull the camera out saying, we are at the Poku camp and actually, according to the elevation yesterday, now we lose like 500ft down and we still carry on with our measurement. If you take this side of the mountain, first you have to cross the ash pit and down to the crater camp and then up again like 500ft to the summit. So we can't see a huru peak. You can't see a Uru peak from here. Okay, but that's where we're going. Yeah. So where are we at right now? We're on the north side. We are on the north side. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. The next zone that you walk through is the alpine desert. This flower is everywhere. The elevation here is 13,000ft. And we carry on with our temperature measurement. Okay. It's a little bit different. Yours was 80, 87.9 and mine's 87.5. Okay, I'm gonna go also measure the pressure in the atmosphere. It could be that. That could be the difference. It's different even than the one we had yesterday. We were 100 foot higher. Yeah. Yeah. So here we're lower. Here we're lower and it went lower. Yeah. Could be salt content in the water, too. If there's mineral content in the water, they're different in water source. I wonder if that could. That could matter. Yeah, because if this comes from a different spring and it has different minerals in the water. Exactly. And this actually coming from, like from the ground.

Okay, that could be it. So every morning they have to check our pulse ox levels to make sure that our brain's getting enough oxygen. Nope, 90. I got to 90. All right. Currently at 13,100 and ascending to 16,000 of the next 3 hours. And we're seeing how our bodies handle altitude on this day because that's going to be a big indicator for summit day. So we're moving up into thinner air and we'll see how we do. Epita, what's our elevation? We are 15, 15,000. That's how it's off. Okay, we're at 15,700. Tomorrow's summit day. What are we doing right now? We are going to 16, which is our acclimatization, and then come back to the game. You don't need to go further, more than 16 because we have to keep energy for tomorrow. Even if everybody's feeling okay. You recommend staying at 16? Don't go higher. 16 is enough. Okay. 16 is when you come back. Keep energy for tomorrow morning because we are going to do the same training.

Yes, sir. Yeah, that's it. Loma knows what's up. So this is the briefing before ascent. We're learning everything that we need to know. It's the trickiest day, so you can see all the guides are lined up and they're taking turns telling us what to expect. 85.7. You have 85.6. Yeah. You think we'll get to the seventies? Yeah. You think so? Yeah. We have to test our oxygen. Whoa. 79. Is that normal? Turn the camera off. Turn the camera off. Hold on, hold on. Try again. Yeah. Yes, it is. Yeah. 86, 94. Saji. 91, 91. Write that one. Write that one. Wow. Come on, man. Like maybe morgane.

It's like walking in loose gravel at this point. Go ahead, 18. Three. It's kind of like a scramble climbing some rocks. You can have to take a step and stop and breathe because there's not a lot of oxygen up here. Wonder what the partial pressure is about to. We're at 18,355. About a thousand away from summit, there's master beautiful man on the mountainous. I would like to introduce you to a killer step. This right here takes all of your oxygen. Then you have to stand there and you breathe. And then there's another one. Yeah, it's good. The mustache. Mustache. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, that's good. Get it? Oh, mustache. That was good. We're ready.

We're ready. It's getting hard now. Just now. Crossing 19,000ft. It's throbbing. Heart rate's pretty high. Just gotta keep moving. I don't finish the last 80ft. Thank you, babu. Okay. We're at the peak altitude. 19, 341. I see the gas cylinder. Kenini's building a shield. Think we can do it? I can't believe this is happening. We're about to boil water on the peak of Kilimanjaro. Mine is 81.2. Mine's 81.0. We have the data. We did it. Thank you, sir.

Okay, before I show you the descent down the mountain, which is a whole other thing, and there's special, like rescue hardware they have and stuff like that. I want to talk a little bit about things that I didn't put in the video here because it's fascinating. I've got some bullet points here. The first thing I want to say is climbing Kilimanjaro is dangerous. There's a handful of people that die every year doing this and there's a large percentage of people that don't make it to the top. So this isn't just something you do. This is a once in a lifetime kind of thing for me and my wife, and this is just a really big deal. And so you don't want to do this unless you're prepared. We worked out a lot. I tried to limit the amount of oxygen intake during my workouts to try to, like, stress my cardiovascular system. We also went to altitude to try to see how our bodies would react to over 14,000ft of altitude. Sickness affects different people in different ways. And so you need to know what your body is going to do. And so we tried to prepare for that as much as possible.

Another note I have here is there's a moment at 17,500ft that happened to us. That was incredible. We looked up and we could feel our hearts pounding. And we saw two guides rushing a man down the mountain. They were clearly saving him. It was a rescue situation. He had an oxygen mask on and it was an eerie moment because we were like, oh, my goodness, this is the real deal. We are not playing around. And at that moment, the porters, who are just so amazing, they started singing. They were calming us down, like, inside. We were all kind of freaking out, wonder if that was going to happen to us. But they were managing our mental state and helping us chill out and just focus on the next few steps. It was amazing.

And I would love to point you to a podcast that I recorded that explains more of that. I'll tell you more about that in a minute. Another thing about how we did this, we hung out at around 13,000ft for several days. We took what's called the northern circuit route. That's one of the most conservative routes. If we had not been with Killy warriors expeditions, with these specific guides, I'm not so sure I would have made it, because they limited you. They always say pole, pole or slowly. Slowly. They would limit you with how fast you could walk so that you don't outrun your cardiovascular capabilities. In fact, on the, how do you say it? acclimatization hike. acclimatization hike. On that one day, to 16,000ft, I got out in front of the group and I was going too fast and my heart rate ran away. And it took a really long time for me to get that back down. So the guides really know what they're doing. They go far slower than you think you should, but they know exactly what they're doing. I was leading for approximately, what, two minutes probably, and I was a moron. My pace was too fast and her heart rate shot up. And then Loma said, no, right? Loma said, pole. Pole. So it takes discipline that I don't have thermometer calibration. Do you remember when Shadrach said, oh, I think we're going to get down to the seventies, and at the top we didn't. Well, calibration is an issue.

I boiled water here in Alabama, which is around 700ft altitude, and I got above 100 degrees celsius. So Shadrach might have been right. The water might actually have been in the seventies. A really cool thing happened when we were on the mountain. NASA astronaut Matthew Dominick, who's really good at taking photos, was in the cupola of the International Space Station the day before we summited. And he took these photos of Kilimanjaro. It is awesome knowing that that little spot of earth sticking up above the clouds, we're on that mountain. That was incredible. There's a couple of pieces of Internet that I think you should consider checking out.

The first one is that podcast episode I mentioned. It's a podcast I do with my buddy Matt Whitman. It's called no dumb questions. And there's a particular episode called Songs of Ascent. We talk about the porters and all the things that they did to make this happen. It's really interesting and I think you'll like it. The other one is the videos that Brady Herron made. The first video was the whole idea here, Brady, when I asked permission to make this video, he said, look, I don't own the idea of boiling water at altitude. And I was like, well, you kind of do to me, because ten years ago, I watched a video that Brady made and it moved me, and I've been thinking about it forever. It was an intelligent, really beautiful piece of art and science mixed together. And it's what I want Internet videos to be. It was gorgeous. And to follow it up, Professor Poliakoff at Nottingham University explained everything about the experiment, including some things that Brady could have done differently.

Now, videos like this don't just happen, especially in today's environment. The sensationalism reigns and algorithmic pressure is applied to creators all the time. And I understand it. You want to get more views and more listens so that you can get more money for advertising, and that's not good for the Internet. I don't think I want intelligent, respectful content to have a place in the market. Brady figured out how to do that. He partnered with academia to make those videos. But that's rare and it's very difficult to figure out. This video is not sponsored by a traditional sponsor. It's supported by something new. There's something called the Independent Media Initiative. And they've given an award to smarter every day. And the only thing they've asked for in return is for me to ask you to be thoughtful about the next piece of content you consume after this video.

And I think that's really cool because a video is going to pop up after this. Something's going to be there for you to click. And the question is, should you watch it? That's what they're trying to do. When I was younger, I would watch PBS. I would watch Mister Rogers neighborhood, which was funded by both public money and private donations. And it was amazing. But tv is not a monolithic thing like it used to be. So what IMI is trying to do is they're trying to connect large institutions and foundations and even private donors with creators who are making intelligent, respectful content for the Internet. So what ends up happening is IMI ends up being this hub for people that are making thoughtful content. So if you want to check out what they're doing, go to the website, which I'll leave a link down in the video description and just look at what they're trying to do, because they're trying to do something very important. They're kind of kicking against the algorithmic pressure that creates sensational content on the Internet and they're trying to make a future with more thoughtful content. And I'm excited about that. Thank you, Imi, for supporting this video.

Thank you for considering checking out Imi. I'm excited about what they're doing. They're a nonprofit and they're working hard to make thoughtful content for the future, which I'm very excited about. So now it's time to go down the mountain. Thank you, Shadrach. You're an impressive man and your team is the best. Very hard, because all of you guys make this trip, it's because of killing warrior. You have a good outfit. We have a very good team behind us, people like Boaz. Are you relieved? I appreciate your leadership. Highest altitude. You can be rescued with a helicopter. There's the stretcher, 15,000ft. It's pretty far up there. She bought me on purpose. So these are little carts that are used to save people when they're hurt. Of course you got a stretcher here, but I was expecting to see this all over the mountain. But I didn't have. But they're pretty cool. They have shocks on them. That's pretty neat. Incredible. So I'm not filming as much on the way down and they're asking paparazzi why he's not being paparazzi. It's because everybody gets hurt on the way downhill, and I don't get hurt.

What do you feel? I feel very happy that we summited, and I feel very happy that we are now back at the camp for the day. However, 12 hours of exertion, and I have no clue how I'm gonna climb out of this bed tomorrow. It's not like a little exertion. It's like, all you can do, like, limited, literally, by your cardiovascular system. No, because also, it's limited by your knees. Your knees on the way down. Yeah. That was a pretty epic journey. It's a great thing to have done. Yes.

Science, Education, Technology, Mount Kilimanjaro, Altitude, Boiling Water Experiment, Smartereveryday