Next in the "Can Plasma?" series: can plasma treat milk? Yes — and the result is sterile, green, smells like crap, and probably curdled. But there's an interesting bioengineering challenge hidden underneath, and a chocolate bar story you'll want to hear.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 The question: can plasma treat milk?

00:05 The short answer: yes, but it ruins the milk

00:11 The devils and the details — and a couple of fun twists

00:17 Quick intro — Greg Friedman, plasma bioengineer, food science background

00:35 The actual question: can plasma extend shelf life by killing bacteria?

00:58 Milk is a complex colloidal solution — proteins, fats, sugars

01:07 Assuming raw cow milk (almond milk is a totally different beast)

01:21 What happens when you ionize air over milk

01:37 Reactive oxygen species oxidize fats — and fats burn easily

02:05 New volatile organic compounds → new smells (some good, mostly bad)

02:38 Why the color changes (nitrogen-bond rotation)

02:49 My experience: room-temperature DBD on raw milk → smells like crap, turns green

03:03 Sterile, nasty, curdled milk — congrats

03:11 Don't forget: nitrates and nitrites get dissolved in your drink

03:30 Short answer: not a good idea

03:35 The longer answer: DBD with room air isn't the only plasma

03:42 Noble gases, gas-phase additives, polymerizable monomers — open R&D

04:14 Why this is a bioengineering challenge, not just a plasma problem

04:33 Why a talented food scientist is irreplaceable here

04:49 Food scientists are magicians — they can turn nasty inputs into majestic outputs

05:30 A Turkish drink analogy — ingredients I hate, mixed = magic

05:42 Calling all food scientists: reach out, I'd love to collaborate

06:00 A cute plasma + food story from an Asian plasma conference

06:15 The chocolate-melting-on-your-fingers problem

06:29 Plasma-deposited micrometer-sized chocolate beads

06:56 Why the beads keep your fingers clean

07:19 Brilliant industrial application — solving a different problem with the same tool

07:43 You opened Pandora's box of engineering challenges

07:52 Wrap-up — keep the questions coming

If you're a food scientist, dairy researcher, or plasma R&D engineer working on novel food processing — this episode is an open invitation. Let's collaborate.

🔔 Subscribe for more in the "Can Plasma?" series: @gregfridman

#CanPlasma #PlasmaScience #FoodScience #PlasmaProcessing #Dairy #Sterilization #FoodTech #Bioengineering #PlasmaChemistry

Today's deviation from plasma (sort of): a meditation on the books that shape engineering visions. Elon Musk has been quietly telling the world what the future looks like — by recommending Ian Banks' Culture series. I bought all 10 audiobooks. I'm on book three. Let me tell you what I'm hearing — and the Asimov novel that built the mission of my own company.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 I know the future. Elon Musk told me.

00:23 AI-driven post-scarcity society

00:43 Elon's actual recommendation: read Ian Banks' Culture series

00:49 Why I take reading advice from people I admire

00:59 Why Elon inspires engineers (love him or hate him)

01:17 Picking up all the Culture novels on Audible

01:27 What book 3 sounds like — AIs that demand citizenship and a personality

02:23 Isaac Asimov's Foundation and the direction of my company

02:32 Where "Our future is electric" actually came from

02:45 The motto AAplasma runs on

03:04 In Foundation, everything runs on atomics

03:33 What if all chemicals are gone? How do we make clothes, plastics, materials?

03:40 The answer: plasma

03:50 The grand vision — replacing the petrochemical industry with electric discharges

04:08 Why Asimov gave me a vision I still walk around quoting

04:18 What Elon's recommendation tells us about his vision

04:33 10 books in the Culture series (one is short)

04:42 Read along with me — let's play catch

04:53 A futuristic society with AI and no money

05:14 Bonus: what reading Artemis did for our NASA proposal

05:19 Moon colony oxygen from electrolysis of liquefied regolith

05:50 Proposing it to NASA — plasma, minimal moving parts

06:02 The future as per Ian Banks' Culture series

06:17 Wrap-up — drop your "Can Plasma?" questions below

If you're an engineer, founder, or anyone whose work needs a long-term vision: read what your heroes read.

🔔 Subscribe for more: @gregfridman

#CanPlasma #ElonMusk #IanBanks #IsaacAsimov #ScienceFiction #PostScarcity #ArtificialIntelligence #PlasmaScience #Engineering #Foundation #CultureSeries

Next in the "Can Plasma?" series: can plasma treat seeds? Short answer: yes — for disinfection, germination, and early plant growth. But where this matters most isn't where you might guess.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 The question: can plasma treat seeds?

00:13 Quick intro — plasma like plasma TV, not blood plasma

00:39 What "treating seeds" actually means

00:45 Two goals: disinfection (eating) and germination (growing)

01:26 Use case 1: Disinfection

01:47 Why you don't want to steam autoclave seeds

01:56 Radiation: expensive, and customers don't love it

02:14 Bleach: alters taste and adds chlorine byproducts

02:26 Why plasma fits — dry, non-thermal, conveyor-belt compatible

02:41 4-log reduction (99.99%) of microbes in a fraction of a second

03:10 Use case 2: Seed germination & early development

03:27 Why this matters most for high-value crops where each seed costs dollars

03:41 The protective seed coat and the water-uptake problem

03:50 Microcracks: how plasma helps water get in

04:05 Reactive oxygen species and germination rate

04:23 Reactive nitrogen species (NO₃⁻) and early plant development

04:47 So… is plasma actually used here?

04:55 Why it's NOT used for endless cornfields

05:06 Monsanto-grade GMO seeds already germinate at ~99%

05:37 Where plasma seed treatment IS thriving: flowers, marijuana, niche high-value crops

05:56 The summary: disinfection, germination, growth enhancement

06:02 Drop your "Can Plasma?" questions below

If you work in agriculture, food safety, controlled-environment agriculture, or specialty crop production — this one's for you.

🔔 Subscribe for more in the "Can Plasma?" series: @gregfridman

#CanPlasma #PlasmaScience #PlasmaAgriculture #SeedTreatment #FoodSafety #AgTech #ControlledEnvironmentAgriculture #PlasmaChemistry

A viewer left a comment that I wanted to respond to properly. They mentioned learning programming and machine learning, the "overwhelming amount of knowledge" out there, and their decision not to let that discourage them. Great attitude — and I wanted to share one thing that took it further for me.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 I can't 10X your life — but I can tell you what I did

00:30 The viewer comment that triggered this video

00:56 A fantastic attitude — and how to take it further

01:21 A plasma example: the impossible microplasma photo

01:42 The problem: catching a microsecond spark through a microscope

02:37 A new undergrad joins the lab

02:59 What I told her instead of dumping the manuals on her

03:27 She did it in a couple of hours

03:35 Turns out it was easy

03:43 The mindset shift: just assume it's easy

04:23 "Fake it till you make it" — and why I take this seriously

04:56 How this changed how I approach new tasks

05:17 What stoicism has to say about it

05:39 A funny story — the lumberyard open house

06:20 The matched pair of Pennsylvania black walnut slabs

06:55 "We did need a dining table…"

07:13 Turns out it was easy. Just took 400 hours.

07:35 The impossible task I had no business doing

07:43 In hindsight, easy

08:02 Wrap-up — drop your "Can Plasma?" questions below

If you've ever felt frozen by the scale of something you're trying to learn or build, this one's for you.

🔔 Subscribe for more from me: @gregfridman

#Mindset #Stoicism #Productivity #PhDLife #Woodworking #LifeAdvice #PlasmaScience #ScienceCommunication

A viewer asked me to review every type of plasma — and to do it like analyzing a sports car: engine, transmission, fuel, cooling, the whole spec sheet. I loved the analogy so much I built a full presentation around it. This one's now part of my undergrad and high school outreach materials.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 Today's experiment: explaining plasma as sports cars

00:16 The viewer question that inspired this episode

01:25 Why the sports-car analogy works (especially for US audiences)

02:28 What plasma actually is — the fourth state of matter, defined by ionization

04:22 The plasma "spec sheet"

04:29 Engine size = temperature

05:02 Fuel = energy source (electric fields, lasers, RF, microwaves)

05:16 Transmission = degree of ionization

05:31 Cooling system = collisionality

05:48 Power-to-weight ratio = density

06:00 Track vs street legal = equilibrium vs non-equilibrium

06:21 Thermal (hot) plasma: the V12 — fusion cores, lightning, stars

08:14 Cold plasma: the Tesla/hybrid — DBDs, jets, RF, microwave plasmas

10:09 Weakly ionized plasmas: the street-legal sports car (most industrial plasmas)

11:35 Fully ionized plasmas: tokamaks and inertial confinement fusion

12:56 Dense vs diffuse plasmas: welding torches vs auroras

13:46 Dusty plasmas: novel materials, semiconductor manufacturing, space science

15:12 Magnetized vs unmagnetized: all-wheel drive vs rear-wheel drive

16:18 Plasma myths, busted

16:25 Myth: cold plasma = low energy

16:48 Myth: plasma is just hot gas

17:06 Myth: weakly ionized = weak

17:30 Myth: all plasma glows

18:35 Myth: plasma is exotic and rare (99% of the visible universe says hi)

19:21 (Aside: wood is rarer than plasma in the galaxy)

19:27 Applications by plasma "model"

19:56 Hot plasmas: fusion, astrophysics, materials testing, reentry simulation

20:21 Cold plasmas: medicine, agriculture, food safety, sterilization

20:57 Weakly ionized plasmas: lighting, semiconductors, displays

21:22 Magnetized plasmas: fusion confinement, ion thrusters, magnetic reconnection

22:16 Dusty plasmas: planetary science, novel material synthesis

22:24 Fully ionized plasmas: inside stars and fusion reactors

22:44 Recap of the lineup

23:11 The unifying thread between cars and plasmas

25:01 Why temperature alone doesn't define plasma

25:35 Plasma: the most engineerable state of matter

26:31 Thanks to the viewer who asked — drop your "Can Plasma?" questions below

If you're a student, educator, or science communicator looking for an intuitive way to teach plasma physics — this presentation was built for you. Feedback welcome in the comments; I'll be using it in classrooms.

🔔 Subscribe for more in the "Can Plasma?" series: @gregfridman

#CanPlasma #PlasmaScience #PlasmaPhysics #ScienceEducation #STEM #SportsCars #SciComm #FourthStateOfMatter

Next in the "Can Plasma?" series: can plasma be scaled up? You built it in the lab, it works beautifully — now turn it into an industrial process. I wrote down 14 reasons that's harder than it sounds.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 The question: can plasma be scaled up?

00:28 Why I wrote down 14 points for this one

00:36 #1 Preserving the plasma regime — from a 2mm jet to a whole strawberry

01:53 #2 Power supply scaling — from a few watts to 100 kilowatts

02:52 The hard x-ray problem (Bremsstrahlung above ~100 kV)

03:13 #3 Uniformity — keeping electrodes parallel across 8 meters within microns

05:07 #4 Gas flow and mixing — non-equilibrium plasmas don't scale linearly

05:12 #5 Heat management — invisible at lab scale, critical at industrial scale

05:55 #6 Electrode erosion, durability, and 24/7 operation

07:14 #7 Chemistry changes with scale (and the ozone production/destruction tradeoff)

08:02 #8 Mass transfer limits — getting reactants out of the plasma

08:34 #9 Diagnostics — you can't deploy 500 optical emission spectrometers

09:12 #10 Energy efficiency — does 95% lab efficiency hold at scale?

09:46 #11 Modular vs monolithic — why industrial ozone systems use hundreds of small electrodes

10:35 #12 Safety and regulatory burden (FDA, CDC, USDA)

11:41 #13 Manufacturability and repeatability at scale

12:26 #14 Control, feedback, and electromagnetic interference between power supplies

13:21 Wrap-up: lasers and metallurgy face the same problem

13:45 The field is wide open — we need more people. Come help us scale plasmas.

If you're a plasma researcher, process engineer, founder, or student deciding whether this is the field for you — this is the episode.

🔔 Subscribe for more in the "Can Plasma?" series: @gregfridman

#CanPlasma #PlasmaScience #ScaleUp #PlasmaEngineering #IndustrialEngineering #ProcessEngineering #Bremsstrahlung #Ozone #ChemicalEngineering

Next in the "Can Plasma?" series: can plasma be used safely around people? Short answer: it depends on your definition of "safely," "used," and "people." Let me walk you through what that actually means.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 The question: can plasma be used safely around people?

00:31 Why the question hinges on three definitions

00:41 The welding torch test: would you hand one to a 7-year-old?

01:16 The unplugged torch at show-and-tell — context is everything

01:35 Hazard #1: Ozone (and why it disappears in a sunny field but not in a hospital)

02:14 FDA limits on human ozone exposure

02:33 Why hospital patient treatment is hard — but hospital laundry might work

02:56 Hazard #2: Ultraviolet radiation (why welders wear masks)

03:17 Hazard #3: High voltage

03:23 Why I'm talking about this — trade-show questions and "can I buy one for home?"

03:46 The welding analogy: trained engineers are MORE afraid, not less

04:17 The helium plasma jet example — even "gentle" plasmas have safety considerations

04:59 OSHA and FDA ozone limits depend on jet size

05:15 What "safely" really means: which plasma, which application, which people?

05:55 The same logic applies to lasers, pharmaceuticals, and ethanol

06:24 Wrap-up — drop your "Can Plasma?" questions below

If you work in plasma applications, medical devices, industrial safety, or you're just curious whether you can buy one and play with it at home — this one's for you.

🔔 Subscribe for more in the "Can Plasma?" series: @gregfridman

#CanPlasma #PlasmaScience #IndustrialSafety #Ozone #PlasmaEngineering #OSHA #FDA #MedicalDevices #SafetyEngineering

Next in the "Can Plasma?" series: can plasma make plastic stick better? Yes — and the more interesting question is whether it can make plastic stick WORSE. We cover both.

⏱️ Chapters

00:00 The question — and the better question (stick worse?)

00:30 Two kinds of plastic: thermosets vs thermoplastics

00:55 A quick word on recyclability

01:16 How plasma activates a surface: breaking bonds, adding charges & oxygen groups

02:17 The water-drop test: hydrophobic vs hydrophilic surfaces

02:38 How long does the treatment last? (Everything depends on everything)

02:45 Why opening the chamber — or trucking a roll across the country — kills the effect

04:12 Corona treaters and the printing industry's naming quirk

04:38 The trickier question: can plasma make plastic stick WORSE?

04:54 Why most plastics are hydrophobic to begin with

05:32 Plasma polymerization: depositing a hydrophobic monomer

05:53 Medical applications: repelling blood and bacteria

06:45 The devil is in the details — analyze the whole process

07:20 Wrap-up — drop your "Can Plasma?" questions below

If you work in surface engineering, packaging, printing, medical devices, or adhesives — this one's for you.

🔔 Subscribe for more in the "Can Plasma?" series: @gregfridman

#CanPlasma #PlasmaScience #SurfaceTreatment #PlasmaTreatment #Adhesion #MaterialsScience #CoronaTreatment #PlasmaChemistry #MedicalDevices

Next up in the "Can Plasma?" series: can plasma remove CO₂? Short answer: no — but the longer answer is way more interesting. Plasma can take CO₂ and turn it into things people actually want to buy.

In this episode I cover:

• Why "removing" CO₂ is the wrong framing — valorizing it is the real opportunity
• Making syngas: reacting CO₂ with methane to produce CO + H₂, a building block of the chemical industry
• Making alcohols from CO₂ and water — methanol, ethanol, and yes, actual vodka (one company sells plasma-produced vodka at a premium to climate-conscious buyers)
• Carbon suboxide (C₃O₂): a yellow-brown polymerizing powder you can make directly from diesel exhaust and use as soil filler or a construction material
• The surprising fact that hospital and university diesel backup generators are among the biggest CO₂ emitters in major cities — and what a trailer-sized plasma system parked next to one could do
• Why scale-up is hard, and why a "valorize, don't prohibit" regulatory approach might be the unlock

If you care about climate tech, plasma chemistry, or unconventional carbon capture pathways — this one's for you.

🔔 Subscribe for more in the "Can Plasma?" series: @gregfridman

#CanPlasma #PlasmaScience #CO2 #CarbonCapture #ClimateTech #PlasmaChemistry #Syngas #CarbonUtilization #ChemicalEngineering

Can non-equilibrium plasma help coagulate blood in people with hemophilia? That is a much harder question than it first appears.

Plasma can dry blood, cross-link biological material, and under some conditions thermally coagulate tissue. But hemophilia is not simply “blood that will not dry.” It involves missing or deficient clotting factors, which means the normal biochemical clotting cascade may not produce a stable clot.

In this video, I talk through why this is such an interesting scientific question, why the answer is not obvious, and why it could make a strong research project for someone interested in plasma medicine, coagulation biology, or hemophilia.