How to Melt The Chicago Bean (and Why We Should)

So, now that it’s April 1 and Spring has  officially arrived, I thought it was time I rebirthed my channel. So, from now on,  Roughest Drafts will no longer be a channel about literature, movies, or storytelling.  No, Roughest Drafts, as the name implies, is all about science and mathematics now.  Welcome to the STEM era of my channel. And what better way to ignite things in this  new era than with a video about a dead meme? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again,  I’m nothing on this channel

if not current. This meme shows the Chicago Bean having  melted, as reported by CBS News Chicago. For those not in the loop, the  Chicago Bean, or just simply The Bean, is the name affectionately given to an art  installation known officially as Cloud Gate, made by British artist Anish Kapoor, and  don’t worry, we will get to him later. Rumors suggest that Kapoor hated the colloquial  name the masses gave to his sculpture, but I can’t find anything more than hearsay  confirming this. Wikipedia

claims that Kapoor initially disliked the name, but the  source only suggests that Kapoor liked it. But anyway, an article from New York Magazine  chronicled The Bean’s rise to meme status. One Chicago resident told the outlet that, even before  the internet took hold of The Bean, it had been an inside joke among the city’s residents for  ages. Some Chicago natives absolutely hate it, others love it, and others still love to  hate it, clowning on it affectionately. In late 2017 and early 2018, C

hicagoans used  Facebook to create events centered entirely around The Bean. These events include “Windex  the Bean,” “Paint the Bean black so they can’t Windex it,” “Pour Paint Thinner On The  Bean After They Paint It Black So We Can Windex,” “Add Googly Eyes to the Bean and only  refer to it as Steve,” and so on and so forth. These memes made The Bean a  staple in internet culture. Now, almost anyone who was active on the internet  around this time knows of The Bean’s name, existence, and meme

status. This would  ultimately snowball into this CBS News meme from Pat Whalen. But let’s say we  wanted to turn The Bean into the T-1,000. Let’s say we wanted to take all the  Chicagoans who hated this piece of modern art and plan a little event for  all of us to get together. But, you know, not on Facebook because that’s a sinking  ship. Sorry, back to the matter at hand. If we were to band together, what would  it take for all of us to melt The Bean? Before we get into it, let me just say t

hat,  for ease of calculation, I have rounded a lot of the numbers up or down to a simple significant  figure. Some of you might call me a hack for this and I will take that in stride. Keep in mind,  this is my first video about STEM, after all. So, at what temperature could we melt the  Bean? Stainless steel has a melting point of about 1500° Celsius. Notably, this is far greater  than the 304.5 degrees in the corner of the meme, which we assume is Fahrenheit given  the American setting. But re

gardless, that's the easy answer – 1500 degrees Celsius. A more interesting answer might follow. The  Bean is made of stainless steel and weighs 110 tons or about 10,000kg. Stainless steel  has a heat capacity of around 0.5 J/(g°C), which means that if you want to raise one  gram of the substance one degree Celsius, you need to add 0.5 joules of energy. So, let’s do some quick maths: We multiply  10,000 kilograms by 1000 grams per kilogram by 0.5 Joules per gram degree Celsius. This  comes out t

o be 5,000,000 Joules per degree Celsius. In essence, this tells us roughly  how much energy we would have to put into the Bean to raise it one degree Celsius. Five  million joules. That's a lot of energy. To make our calculations easier, let’s say we’re  melting the Bean on an average December day, with the temperature being about 0° Celsius  in Chicago, according to Google. That means we want a difference of 1500°C. So, to know  how many joules per gram degree Celsius we need to get the Bean t

o its melting state,  we just multiply our previous number by 1500. Ergo, 5,000,000 J per °C times 1500°C equals  7.5 times 10 to the ninth power joules. Or, in simpler terms, 7.5 billion joules. To  contextualize how much energy that truly is, it takes about 50,000 joules to heat a  cup of coffee. So, the energy we’d need to melt the Bean is the same as the energy  required to heat 150,000 cups of coffee. And keep in mind, this is assuming the  Bean won’t radiate heat to the outside, and that w

hatever method we use to heat the  Bean uses perfect conduction. Obviously, neither of these two stipulations is  likely, but we’ve made it this far. If our goal is to melt the Bean, and we want  to get as many people involved as possible, well, there’s a simple method we can devise with  an object that most everyone owns – a toaster. Toasters are usually rated at 1200 watts. That  means they use 1200 joules of energy per second. Once again, I reiterate, we’re supposing that  the Bean does not r

adiate any given heat from its surface and that the heat is transmitted  perfectly from the toasters to its surface. If we could rally 100 angry people with  toasters, we could transmit 120,000 watts, or joules per second, to the Bean. By taking  7.5 billion and dividing it by 120,000, we find that it would take 62,500 seconds  to melt the art installation at this rate. That’s about 17 and a half hours. We assume  this rate scales linearly depending on the number of toasters. So, if we could get

250  people to each bring their own toaster, that would give us 300,000 joules per second, which  whittles the time down to just under 7 hours. Now, there’s definitely more to be had here, more  that I’m certainly not capable of explaining here in the first STEM video on my channel. But to  all my fellow physics and math people out there, I invite you to consider what might  happen in this scenario if the bean were radiating heat from its surface.  Or how many toasters it might take if the tran

smission of energy weren’t  perfect, which it likely wouldn’t be. But, to come to some sort of conclusion, 250  people armed with toasters and a disregard for all but freshman-level physics laws could  take care of that sucker in a single workday. So, I suppose the question then becomes  why would we want to melt the Bean? Well, for one thing, the artist, Anish  Kapoor, is a real piece of work. On May 18, 2017, a petition went up on  change.org with the title “Stop Anish Kapoor stealing our ligh

t and colour!” As the  petition itself explained, the stated goal was to “stop Anish Kapoor, who owns a large studio  at the back of houses on Camberwell New Road, building an extra floor on the studio  and blocking our precious light & view, a valuable thing in our crowded city. You'd think  Anish Kapoor would understand the value of light, colour and social responsibility. Across  London residents are being rode rough shod by councils who value commerce  over community. This is one example.” R

esidents on Camberwell New Road felt  they were being entirely undermined and left out of a decision that  would affect them personally. Urban design advisor Julie Greer called the  building plans “extremely disappointing.” She said, “The proposed height of the extension  at 3,670 millimetres is far greater than what is necessary to extend a building at roof  level. Its dominance due to its height, scale and use of materials remains  unacceptable. The design does not integrate well with the host

building and the  proposed use of materials is inappropriate.” Still, despite these efforts,  Kapoor remained unreachable, and he went ahead with his plans anyway, in a  move that was called “mean-spirited” by locals. Suzanne Malyon, who started the change.org  petition, also reported, “The planning officer in charge of Kapoor's case was really  unhelpful, never visited any of the affected rooms and actually lied in the committee meeting  when he said Kapoor's team had consulted with us.” “Kapo

or sets him self up as an engaged, political  individual, who you would think could empathise with the residents' dismay of having to live  with the oppressive height of the design, which will really impact their lives.  But of course that doesn't suit him, where commenting on Brexit or Donald Trump is  better to show what a good liberal guy he is.” Also, this is unrelated, but the website that  interviewed Malyon, Dezeen, called her Maylon, which just gets on my nerves as someone  who’s aware o

f how little proofreading is done in online journalism. And that’s  just one of many errors in the two articles chronicling this battle between residents  and Kapoor. But back to the matter at hand. There is some debate as to how much Kapoor’s  building extension actually did affect residents. Even still, the situation  highlights how, even on a local level, institutions are more interested in the rich than  they are in the everyday man. As Malyon said, “He's part of the moneyed, connected estab

lishment  and we feel like we're not listened to as we're less able to afford lawyers. So, [we] just  feel shafted really. I think the thing that we found the most disappointing was the  fact that Kapoor or the architects would never meet with the residents, even though  we contacted Kapoor's studio numerous times.” So, you might think this Anish Kapoor  guy sounds a little out of touch, maybe even a little elitist. Well,  wait till you get a load of this. As Truman Chambers from The Collector r

eports, “In 2014, Surrey NanoSystems released a  material called ‘Vantablack.’ At the time, Vantablack was famously promoted as the world’s  blackest black, absorbing 99.965% of visible light. That same year, Kapoor began to use  this newly developed material in his artwork.” As the article further explains, Vantablack was  never intended for commercial use in art. Still, the idea of a “blackest black” was  intriguing for artists. However, despite the intrigue across the art world,  only Kapoor

was using it. Why? Because he bought the exclusive rights. Now, if you think  buying the exclusive rights to a particular shade of color is antithetical to  art, you’d be absolutely right! Fellow British artist Christian  Furr would agree with you. He was also interested in using Vantablack,  and once Kapoor bought the rights, he said in an interview, “I’ve never heard  of an artist monopolizing a material… All the best artists have had a thing for pure  black… This black is like dynamite in the

art world. We should be able to use it. It  isn’t right that it belongs to one man.” Kapoor has defended the exclusivity of Vantablack  by reminding others that it was never intended to be used in art. He explained that there were  strict safety protocols required in using the shade of black. Still, just because something  is hard to get your hands on or requires a lot of regulation doesn’t mean it should belong  to just one person, what an awful defense. Also, I just have to highlight this quo

te  from Kapoor’s interview with Euronews: “So if there's some idiot person who's out  there trying to making a fuss about it, well, it isn't as he says it is. Whatever, I  couldn’t care less.” Mm, yes, what a normal, level-headed, and well-articulated response. This  does indeed sound like the answer of someone who couldn’t care less when asked about ownership,  property rights, innovation, and inclusivity. Matters weren’t helped when Kapoor’s first  project involving Vantablack was a series of

10 watches, each priced at $95,000 with  an internal layer of the experimental color. Another artist was just as unapproving of  Kapoor’s exclusivity as Christian Furr. This was an artist named Stuart Semple. In 2016,  Semple fired back at Kapoor by introducing a pigment he called “Pinkest Pink.” He made this  pigment available to everyone except Kapoor. When buying Pinkest Pink, a shopper  would be greeted by this message: “By adding this product to your cart you  confirm that you are not Anis

h Kapoor, you are in no way affiliated to Anish Kapoor,  you are not purchasing this item on behalf of Anish Kapoor or an associate of Anish  Kapoor. To the best of your knowledge, information and belief this paint will not  make its way into the hands of Anish Kapoor.” So, if you were Anish Kapoor, what would you  do in this situation? Probably ignore this, right? Let it all blow over. Can you  imagine what the actual Anish Kapoor did? With apparently zero awareness of  his public image, Kapoor

posted a picture to Instagram displaying his  middle finger which had been dipped in the Pinkest Pink pigment.  A real class act, this guy. From there, Semple continued a mostly one-sided  feud with Kapoor. The artist would go on to create a Facebook event, encouraging invitees  to wear their pinkest lipstick and gather in Chicago to kiss The Bean. Everyone was invited  to this event except, of course, Anish Kapoor. Semple would go on to create a pigment called  “Lit – the world’s glowiest glow

,” which was made available to everyone, including  and especially Anish Kapoor. In fact, if Kapoor or his associates did choose to order, the pigment was free, so that Kapoor would  know “how lovely it feels to #shareTheLight.” And despite the ways Kapoor  profited off of Vantablack, his ownership would go on to be  irrelevant as an even darker pigment came to be in 2019. MIT developed a  black that absorbs 99.995% of light. Artist Diemut Strebe unveiled the pigment  alongside the MIT engineers

with a piece called The Redemption of Vanity. Accompanying the piece  was this statement from the artist and engineers: “The project can also be interpreted as  a statement against British artist Anish Kapoor’s purchase of exclusive rights  to a formula of carbon nanotubes as a material for artworks. Strebe and Wardle use  a different composition of carbon nanotubes, which will be available for any artist to use.” So, what have we learned here today?  In conclusion … I forgor. But hey, that’s j

ust a theory. A BEAN  THEORY. Thanks for watching. As always, I want to give a huge shoutout to  my Patrons and their continued support. If you want to support the content I make, you  can head over there for benefits like access to the community Discord, early access to  videos, and priority for work reviewed on the second channel. Subscribe over there if  you want some writing tips and submit your work at the link in the description. Follow  me on Instagram and Twitter if you want. And in any

case, let me ask, what did you  think of this video essay? Do you think we could or should melt The Bean? What other factors  would you consider in trying to do so? Please, tell me everything, and ultimately,  keep in mind, this is a rough draft.